Catholic schools are closing their doors all across America, leaving future generations with nowhere to turn for the high-quality academics and values-based education so many families are seeking. The number of students attending Catholic schools in the US fell from about 5.2 million in 1965 to around two million in 2008.
Pioneer Institute believes these schools are worth preserving. For over a decade, we have raised our voice in support of these excellent academic options, and tools such as tax credit scholarships that would enable more families to attend.
Pioneer has held public forums, published research on the benefits of Catholic education, on successful models such as Cristo Rey, and on policy changes that would stop the Massachusetts education department from depriving religious school students of special needs services and school nurses. The Institute has also convened key stakeholders, appeared in local and national press, filed amicus briefs, produced a feature a documentary film, and much more.
This week on “The Learning Curve,” co-host Gerard Robinson and guest co-host Kerry McDonald talk with Howard Bryant, a senior writer for ESPN and the author of nine books, including Full Dissidence: Notes From an Uneven Playing Field and The Heritage: Black Athletes, A Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism. Bryant shares how his experiences as a student, baseball fan, and sportswriter growing up in 1970s-era Boston have shaped his understanding of race relations and sports. He discusses celebrated American athletes who have broken barriers, from Jackie Robinson and Celtics legend Bill Russell to the Williams sisters and Tiger Woods. Bryant describes how these pioneering athletes were treated, and how they handled their celebrity status. He also offers thoughts on how the multi-billion-dollar professional sports industry is addressing larger racial disparities.
Stories of the Week: In San Francisco, a recall election ousted three members of the Board of Education, after a period of remote learning challenges, controversial school renaming process, admissions policy changes, and other issues. Democratic strategists are raising concerns about their party’s weak positioning on education issues, which will likely continue to play a major role in this election cycle.
Tweet of the Week
Videos: “You can pick up on patterns of words or phonemes and graphemes that match together to make certain words, and you use more skills than you think you do when you first start,” a 4th grade teacher said. https://t.co/2WbJMxAmtb
— Education Week (@educationweek) February 21, 2022
News Links
Education, traditionally a strength, has Democrats on their heels
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/02/21/democrats-education-politics-race-covid/
In Landslide, San Francisco Forces Out 3 Board of Education Members
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/16/us/san-francisco-school-board-recall.html
Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
[00:00:00] GR: Listeners. This is Gerard Robinson. Welcome to another wonderful session of The Learning Curve. Recently, I’ve had an opportunity to cohost with someone else who you’ve already heard from, and this week I get a chance to co-host again. My regular cohost Cara is trotting around the earth, and so we want to make sure her and her family’s got a great time.
[00:00:39] But we always want to make sure that we get great people on here, uh, , to talk to our guests and to also talk to you. And so of course, we reached out to Kerry McDonald who has been with us before and Kerry, welcome back to The Learning Curve.
[00:00:52] Kerry: Oh, it’s great to be back with you, Gerard. Thanks for inviting me
[00:00:56] GR: or things for you.
[00:00:58] Carrie: Things are doing great. my [00:01:00] primary work is with a foundation for economic education. The country’s oldest free market think tank. And I just launched a new podcast, the liberated podcast, which is a weekly podcast on, education related issues that kind of connect to free markets and individual Liberty.
[00:01:16] GR: Well, I’ve definitely retweeted, several of the posts that you sent out and you always keep things really interesting. So when we talk about polls, we also talk about stories and, , I’ve got one story of the week and you’ve got one as well as our guests. I’ll let you kick us off with telling us, the story that.
[00:01:33] Kerry: Sure. So my article I thought was really interesting for us to talk about today is from the Washington post and it is entitled, education. Traditionally, a strength has Democrats on their heels. It was, posted on February 22nd. It looks like, and it really, I think describes some of the challenges that democratic.
[00:01:58] Are confronting and will continue to [00:02:00] confront over the coming months, , in terms of re-election campaigns or, , getting into office. And this was made clear, certainly when we all saw, Virginia governor Glenn Yuncken, , when the gubernatorial race they’re running on a platform of parents matter, , as the kind of contrarion to his opponent who was sort of downplaying the role of.
[00:02:23] In the classroom and education. And I think Democrats are realizing that they have an uphill climb here, in kind of sidelining parents. And, they’re kind of strategizing what they can do about
[00:02:34] Howard: it. As you
[00:02:35] GR: know, both of us are big proponents of parental opportunity, parental choice. And as you mentioned, Virginia, of course, I live here in Charlottesville, supported the governor, also supported, our now Lieutenant governor.
[00:02:47] And the attorney general parents matter, but when you really want to see how much they matter, go after things they think are important. And so in Northern Virginia, when there was a big push to change the entrance [00:03:00] requirements and to Thomas Jefferson high school, arguably the best public high school in the country, when they began to tinker with, what I would often call color coding classrooms, for purposes of equity.
[00:03:11] Legitimately, we should have questions and concerns about equity and opportunity, but it was done in a way that made parents across the racial and economic barriers. Say something about this just seems like you’re trying to cook the books and we don’t like it. And so with that, Also with the fact that Virginia was one of the top five states, to open up their public schools for the least amount of time, , with millions of dollars point in it just made people think differently and ask different questions.
[00:03:39] And so I think what we saw here in Virginia, , is an example of what we may see in other places. And in fact, that leads me to my story of the week, , from the New York times. And it’s focused on the, we call of three school board members in San Francisco. Now let’s go back a year. And when you think of San Francisco, you think about, , the [00:04:00] progressive things, school boards done, you think about the opportunities to try to give low-income students.
[00:04:05] You talk about the city being very progressive and yet when they decided to move forward with a, a plan to say, we’re going to change, the requirements to create a lottery system in order to allow students to go into low high school. my friends who graduated from law would never want me to say that I’m comparing low.
[00:04:25] To Thomas Jefferson in Virginia. But what I will say is that low is arguably one of the best public high schools in the country. Like a Thomas Jefferson. it’s a merit base, system to get in. And they were tinkering with that again, for issues of equity, like a low high school, where approximately 50% of the students are Asian Thomas Jefferson high school.
[00:04:47] even a larger percentage. And so you had that taking place, plus as an, in Virginia, at least in San Francisco, they were not opening up the schools as fast as people would have wanted, even when they were [00:05:00] given a green light by the authorities to do so. And then when you couple that with crusade by some of the members to change the names of some of the schools, understandably some of the names were, are affiliated with horrible aspects of American history.
[00:05:16] And he said, we should change that we should move forward. Will you bring these three things into play parents ask two simple questions. Number one, I hear what you saying, but what are you doing for my children and their education right now? And there wasn’t much, they saw really taking place.
[00:05:31] And number two, they said, well, you as an elected board, What are you going to do to try to change the dynamics of how we move forward? And after a law campaign, three board members were ousted. And to put it in perspective, when you look at the fact that you’ve got, you know, 70% of the voters who turned out and said, listen, we want to recall the members out of the.
[00:05:54] 499,771 registered voters, [00:06:00] 128,862, , were counted and they basically supported the, we call 74, uh, 4% for one candidate and moved 70% for the others. Uh, the board of supervisors would not have to certify the results. those three board members will be replaced by the. the mayor will appoint three new members and then of course there’ll be an election coming forward.
[00:06:19] And so this is just another example of families deciding not to wait for politicians to make decisions for them. they decided to, , vote with their actual vote and to do some things there. So , it’s a big shakeup in that system. this has been the year. , I would say within the last year and a half of school board, uh, recall efforts more than we’ve seen in the last 10 years.
[00:06:43] So San Francisco is an interesting story. And even when we talk about San Francisco as a school system, there are some great things are taking place in this school system. We overlook the fact that there are over night. Private schools in San Francisco that you have approximately 22,000 students in private [00:07:00] schools.
[00:07:00] You have, again, a little more than 55,000 in the school system. Most of them, , many of them, students of color, and so in a place that promotes equity opportunity and equality. Then seem to really pan itself out in the city and the voters have spoken.
[00:07:15] Kerry: Yeah. And I think you’re right. It was a breathtaking recall of those three school board members in what is considered a very left leaning progressive city.
[00:07:24] But yet. Similar themes to what we were just talking about related to the Virginia race and, certainly other democratic races coming up that parents are frustrated, particularly with ongoing coronavirus policies in schools, they want more of a voice. they want school board members to be accountable and to be focusing on the issues that really matter to them.
[00:07:47] And so, you know, I think it would be certainly an interesting campaign cycle. This.
[00:07:51] GR: I remember some years ago when the tea party, , started to make its rise in local state and then national politics,[00:08:00] , speaker Pelosi referred to it as AstroTurf, and then ended up becoming a real grassroots movement. when you take a look at this current recall, there are some people who are saying.
[00:08:09] These aren’t real parents who were fired up. These were really , hedge fund, , executives, , these were millionaires. These were moms and dads, some who didn’t have children, the public school, who are the ones that put up money to support taking neighborhoods for a better San Francisco or other initiatives.
[00:08:29] And when I heard you hear people say that, I said, well, Hey. Even if you don’t have a child in your public school system, you’re still a tax payer. And so you’re paying into that system. Even if you have children in private schools, you also can still vote for someone on the post-school board and in California, which is a big, not only, , it’s a referendum state, you often put things before voters, to do so.
[00:08:49] People from the left and the right put millions of dollars into campaigns every year. In fact, Just recently, with Gavin Newson his, we call race. And so I just find it interesting [00:09:00] when certain groups of people lose, we say it’s money. When they, when we see its voters,
[00:09:06] Kerry: right. And I, again, I think that if politicians continue with this strategy of demonizing parents and, , , painting them as something that they’re not and, you know, criticizing their motives and that sort of thing, it’s just going to backfire, on these politicians.
[00:09:23] GR: The work that you’re doing at your think tank and of course, what you’re learning with your own research and your podcasts, what are you hearing parents say? Are they feeling empowered just across the board. They still feel that their attack where it’s just somewhere in the middle.
[00:09:36] Kerry: Yeah. You know, I’ve been really interested in the flood of education, entrepreneurship that has emerged over the past couple of years.
[00:09:45] Parents demanding more options, wanting various alternatives to an assigned district school, and then entrepreneurs stepping up to create these new options and provide more choices for families. And of course, we’re also seeing it on the [00:10:00] policy side too, with school choice legislation, expanding in many states.
[00:10:04] And there being a lot of momentum for that. And I think we’ll continue to see that. So the combination of education, entrepreneurship, and legislative changes that it expand school choice policies at the state level, think are really going to be a win for families across the country.
[00:10:19] GR: I had an opportunity to travel to Milwaukee, last fall blues, September.
[00:10:24] To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Milwaukee parental choice program. at that, well still is the, urban based, pro-choice school voucher program in the country. I say urban based because as we know, some new England states in fact have had, you know, pro-choice programs, going back to the 19th century, what was so enlightening to me, I would all, maybe, maybe it’s frightening to me where the number of young people that say.
[00:10:49] 25, who, when they heard about, you know, the role that a Polly Williams played As movement, African-American Democrat, state representative, single mom who had one [00:11:00] time was, a campaign person for Jesse Jackson in the eighties when he ran for office, , it was her partnering with, , a Republican governor partnering.
[00:11:09] With other Democrats and some Republicans to say, we want to make this happen. And they were shocked to know ane that there was actually bipartisan support for vouchers at the beginning. And number two, that in fact it was a group of parents who actually pushed for this to happen because in their world, They think what they hear now about parental empowerment is actually new.
[00:11:29] When in fact it’s been going on for decades on both sides of the fence, but at least as it may remains with , , the modern, I would call the modern school choice movement. Many of them really are shocked to know that it used to be bi-partisan and that there was actually a parental voice in this.
[00:11:46] Yeah.
[00:11:46] Kerry: And again, I think , that over the past couple of years, , as parents have been frustrated with school closures and remote learning and unpredictability of, , their children’s classrooms, that’s really, , inspired parents to become more [00:12:00] involved and maybe to look at school choice, when they wouldn’t have previously, they would have made a thought it was a political, angle or not know much about it, and then kind of living it over the past couple of years and saying, gee, my school’s closed for in-person learning.
[00:12:15] Wouldn’t it be nice if I was able to take my tax dollars elsewhere, for example, you know, that kind of, , personalization of school choice, I think has really captured a lot of parents attention.
[00:12:26] GR: Are there some lessons that you think you and I should share? The entrepreneurs who are now involved in the work, uh, families who may be new to the movement, any thoughts , , from our experience that we could share for them to have them avoid some of the pitfalls that we may have seen when we initially got.
[00:12:44] Kerry: That’s such a great question, , for entrepreneurs, I think it’s spotting needs and a demand from parents in specific areas, and then imagining these new possibilities and new solutions beyond perhaps what we think of as conventional schooling. I think that’s one thing,[00:13:00] , that this coronavirus response has triggered is really looking at education beyond schooling and seeing all of the different ways that it can be done.
[00:13:08] I think for example, Startup here in the Boston area called Kai pod learning that participated in the prestigious Y Combinator startup accelerator program in Silicon valley and has some, , investment backing there. And they’re doing some really great things about bringing, , Students together, multi age, kind of a micro school environment in these sort of commercial storefront, , areas with adult facilitators, but the students bring with them an online curriculum or, , some kind of virtual learning system that they’ve created or that they’ve purchased, or perhaps even one of the public ones.
[00:13:42] And then. With other students during the day in these spaces that are facilitated by adults, that, the adults create these enrichment opportunities for kids. And so it kind of breaks down some of the barriers that we see with remote learning, some of the, , separation that students might feel some of the loneliness [00:14:00] That back into kind of a real learning space, but still customizable with kind of the benefits of remote learning. So I think we’ll still continue to see more of those kinds of, , innovations and entrepreneurship. And then the key really, I think for policy makers, , is to remove barriers. Entrepreneurs in general, and especially for education entrepreneurs, lower regulations and, encourage this growth of education alternatives throughout, various
[00:14:27] GR: states.
[00:14:28] I agree. the thing that I would share with entrepreneurs and parents is not to take a legislative victory for granted. legislature has change, either because a change in party or you can still have members of the same party in power, but they can change their point of view. I mean, to think today that you have, Democrats in DC and in state legislatures.
[00:14:52] Arguing to either stop the momentum for charter schools or to try to get rid of them altogether, would have been thought of as [00:15:00] heresy. We think about the fact that, president bill Clinton was the one who helped to create, it became charter school week, the office of charter schools and the department of ed.
[00:15:09] It was in fact in your state, Tom Birmingham, California, Gary Hart. , Mr. Young in Minnesota, it was Democrats. In fact who helped lead the charter school movement and played a strong role in open up those doors of opportunities to family. We’ll fast forward, , today, 30 years later in not looking the same.
[00:15:29] So I would definitely say don’t rest on your laurels because a governor signs, a bill, you have to remain tenacious and follow what’s going on. That means you have to go to all the board meetings, if you can great, but work with organizations, , advocacy groups that actually follow this work because that’s one of the things that shocked me 30 years, , into this work that some of our friends, have become enemies.
[00:15:52] And some of our enemies have become friends and that some people who believe parental choice was important 15 years ago, [00:16:00] think it’s a albatross.
[00:16:02] Kerry: Yeah, I think that’s why it really points to the need for culture change and really kind of reaching the hearts and minds of parents because you’re right. You know, politicians change, political momentum, sways, different directions.
[00:16:15] And so it really is about, showing parents the real benefit of education choice.
[00:16:21] GR: Absolutely anything else you want to share with our listeners? That’s on your mind, maybe even not the article that you read, but something else you want us to know before we go to our guests.
[00:16:31] Kerry: No, I’m really excited for our guests.
[00:16:33] Of course, I’m a Bostonian, a lifelong Bostonian and a sports fan here. So be great to talk to.
[00:16:40] GR: Yeah, listeners, the him, that she’s talking about going to join us. It’s Howard Bryant. He is the author of nine award-winning books focused on sports, , particularly. And so we’ve got some questions for him.
[00:16:54] Look forward to bringing them on board. Now you grew up in Boston. I grew up in Los Angeles, big Dodgers [00:17:00] fan. So that part I won’t hold against you. I’ll try to stay away from some of the, uh, west coast, questions, but, look forward to having him and I look forward to us tack TIMI for that part of the show.
[00:17:09] Absolutely. Okay. We’ll be right.
[00:17:41] Well, I’m so excited to have Howard Brian joined us for a conversation. How it, Brian is the author of nine award-winning book. Full distance, no Trump, an uneven playing ground all the way to books about sisters and champions. The true story of Venus and Serena Williams [00:18:00] illustrated by Floyd Cooper and he’s contributed, essays to 14 others.
[00:18:04] He’s been a senior writer for ESPN since 2007 and has served as a sports correspondent for NPR. It can addition Saturday, since 2006, previously Howard Brian worked at the Washington post, the Boston Herald the record in, Hackensack, New Jersey and the San Jose mercury news. The fact that we’ll also going to add the Oakland Tribune.
[00:18:28] In addition, he’s appeared in several documentaries, including baseball, the 10th inning and Jackie Robinson, both directed by Ken burns and major league. Hank Aaron, which was produced by Smithsonian and major league baseball. Howard, thank you so much for
[00:18:45] Howard: joining us now. It’s my pleasure.
[00:18:46] Thank you for that.
[00:18:47] Kerry: Howard, I’m going to kick us off with some questions. , you grew up in Boston in the 1970s. I’m born and raised in the Boston area and also a big Boston sports fan. Grew up. I grew up in the [00:19:00] south shore in Weymouth. Yeah.
[00:19:01] Howard: We used to play. Probably when we moved to Plymouth, I’d played at Plymouth, Carver, and we played Weymouth with north and Weymouth, south that’s right.
[00:19:10] Yeah.
[00:19:10] Kerry: Well, when I was there, , consolidated back to Weymouth high, so yeah, I graduated in 95. Yeah. But , the old colony league and. Yeah, good memories. So your first book is shut out a story of race and be baseball in Boston. Would you share with our listeners some of the history of abolitionism, ethnic conflict and deeply troubling race relations that sets the larger context for understanding Boston, the red Sox and race, as well as your own personal experiences, being a student baseball fan and sports writer in.
[00:19:49] Howard: Sure. Well, I think that one of the things about that book that has always appealed to me and it appealed to me at the time, which is why I wanted to do it was I think when you grow up black in [00:20:00] Boston and you’re a baseball. So much of your fandom is rooted in the history of the red Sox that the red Sox were the last team to integrate in 1959 with Pumpsie green.
[00:20:10] And not only that, but they could have been the first, they had an opportunity to the first chance to sign Jackie Robinson in 1945. And didn’t do it. So not only did they miss out on Jackie Robinson, but instead of becoming the first, the pioneer, they became the last, which was, Infamous for that franchise.
[00:20:27] And in between they had opportunities to sign numerous great players, including they had the first shot at Billy Mays in 1948. And so these stories played on top of each other and. As time went on. As you know, I grew up in the seventies and even then the red Sox did not really have a high number of black players.
[00:20:45] Race was always central. Of course, during that time you had busing as well happening with the, public schools of the racial imbalance act. And all of this to me had always been written through the lens of.[00:21:00] Everybody, but the black people who had to live it, it was about whether or not the folks in Southie felt aggrieved or whether or not judge Garrity.
[00:21:08] His ruling was fair or not fair, whether or not Tom Yaki was a racist. And all of these things didn’t take into account the humanity of the players, of the African-American players who had to live in Boston or the African-American kids who had to go to those schools and deal with what was taking place or the black face.
[00:21:27] Who had to make these decisions like my family, about whether or not they were going to put their kids in that environment. And so you grow up and you become a journalist and this is eating at you. And one of the reasons I became a journalist was the idea of watching a basketball game or watching a baseball game, and then reading the story in the Boston globe the next day or the Herald.
[00:21:48] And you say, well, that’s not what I remember. So I love the idea of being able to say what I thought happened last night. And. How I want it to represent these different pieces of history. And so that was [00:22:00] really Genesis of that book. And I think that one of the interesting things about that project was learning everything that was taking place in between, and that there, the red Sox, the red Sox have always had a prominent place in the history of race and major league baseball.
[00:22:17] But they really weren’t that different from any other team at that time. I mean, the Yankees were just as racist as the red Sox. So with the tigers in the Philadelphia Phillies, they weren’t really unique. What made them unique was even when the game began to integrate, even after Jackie Robinson and after Willie Mays and Henry Aaron and Frank Robinson and all those great players, even then the red Sox still, when everybody else was moving forward, the red Sox stadium.
[00:22:44] And they’d stayed behind as a franchise. The red Sox were sued twice by the Massachusetts commission against discrimination for not hiring any black employees. both I believe in 1951 and also in 1959. So this history was [00:23:00] deeply embedded in the franchise and it made rooting for the team. A very curious experience.
[00:23:07] Maybe
[00:23:07] Kerry: we can dig deeper into this. You’ve mentioned Jackie Robinson. Of course he’s among the most celebrated sports figures in American history. Could you discuss his infamous tryout with the Red Sox in April of 1945 and how he and other black players, including Reggie Smith, Jim Rice, Dennis oil can Boyd and
[00:23:27] Mookie Betts were treated in Boston. And why?
[00:23:31] Howard: I think that tryout is one of the great moments in baseball history, because it shows you that. It always frustrated me when people would refer to baseball integration as the color line as if it were this immutable space that somehow was like broken.
[00:23:46] And instead integration had been a conversation. It had been an issue that had been going on, obviously since the 18 hundreds, since black players were kicked out of the game in the late 18 hundreds. And so everyone has had known what was taking place. And everyone [00:24:00] knew that, integration or segregation in baseball was very much in line with the increasing segregation and Jim Crow that was taking place across the country.
[00:24:08] And so. You come out of World War two and world war two is the fight for freedom world war two is the referendum that freedom triumphed over fascism. And that this was , a Titanic struggle for the human spirit. And yet this is how black people are being treated in the United States. And so the entire idea, not just in.
[00:24:32] the military, because let’s not forget that during this Titanic struggle for freedom. The United States military is segregated. They’re not an integrated unit until 1948. And so how long could you keep this society separate? How long could this last while these other events are taking place around the world and while the United States is positioning itself as.
[00:24:55] the Victor, as the difference maker in terms of the direction of [00:25:00] world history. And one of the areas where you saw this meritocracy needing to be corrected was in sports. Something as simple as sports as ridiculous as a baseball game. And you could see why this was so important because if these players could play together on the same thing, If they could travel together, if they could shower together, if they could eat together, if they could room together, then why can’t they go to school together?
[00:25:29] Why can’t they live in the same neighborhood? , so on the one hand, sports may seem ephemeral, but on the other hand, it’s extremely important because if these things can take place on a daily basis, then why can’t they take place in a daily basis in our everyday lives? So the red cell. We’re the first team to have an opportunity that integration simply because of one person has a door, much.
[00:25:47] Nick, a Boston city counselor from west Roxbury who had the temerity to demand that the red Sox lead in terms of living up to Boston’s history as one of the great integrated cities in the 17 [00:26:00] hundreds, as the place where you did have integrated schools early. to live up to Boston’s revolutionary war history, even though Boston was a loyalist city, but so be it.
[00:26:10] And, um, and the red Sox brought in three players, Marvin Williams, Jackie Robinson, and Sam Jethro on April 1945. And they hit a few balls and they wore red Sox uniform. So there’s, I wish there had been a photo of it where Jackie Robinson actually was wearing a Boston red Sox. And they hit a few balls and then they said, thank you very much.
[00:26:33] And none of the players ever heard from the red Sox again, and Jackie Robinson took that bitterness to his grave. Sam Jethro, as it turned out, ended up integrating in Boston. Anyway, five years later. With the Boston Braves and ended up winning rookie of the year. So he was the first. So he was in that trout in 1945.
[00:26:50] I ended up playing in Boston with the Braves before they moved to Milwaukee. And then of course now they play in Atlanta. So the deep history of race and [00:27:00] integration runs right through Boston, whether we want it to, or not, especially when you look at Boston’s history of abolition and part of that, that legend of Boston, part of that legacy of Boston, , people wanted to hold onto.
[00:27:12] And that, first 18, 17th, 18th century history, they wanted that to translate into the 20th century then of course it really didn’t. And so it’s interesting when you’re a longtime Bostonian, you know, the difference between what we grew up reading in the textbooks, and then what the history.
[00:27:32] Kerry: Really interesting.
[00:27:33] You know, we’ve been talking a lot about the red Sox, but let’s shift gears to the Celtics. One of the greatest athletes in Boston sports is the south X basketball legend bill Russell. Could you talk a little bit about his experiences playing in Boston, the late 1950s and sixties, and why even today there, you know, we have this modest statue downtown, but there seems to be little dedicated to bill Russell’s historic achievements and his.
[00:27:59] Yeah. [00:28:00] Yeah. Well,
[00:28:01] Howard: because this is the thing. , on the one hand, you have to think about what was taking place during this time. So on the one hand, in the 1940s, the 1945, you have the red Sox tryout. The red Sox don’t integrate the red Sox. Don’t integrate until 1959. The Braves integrate in 1950, but they move after the 1952 season to Milwaukee, the Celtics have read our back as their coach in the late fifties, they bring in bill Russell, they draft the trade for bill Russell in the 1956.
[00:28:28] And the Celtics become a dynasty and the Celtics not only become a dynasty, but the Celtics become leaders. If you contrast the red Sox and the Celtics, the red Sox have this miserable racial history and the Celtics. On the other hand, when eight straight championships, bill Russell wins 11 championships in 13 years, the Celtics break , the unspoken taboo in the NBA of always having a majority number of white players on the court.
[00:28:52] You always had to have. Three to two at the very least, or at the very, yeah, at the very moment, the very most, and that our back has five black [00:29:00] players on the court at the same time. So he breaks that unspoken rule red, our bag breaks the rule of having, at least the first black coach, the hires bill Russell in 1966 to be the first black head coach of the major sports.
[00:29:11] So on the one hand, you’ve got this terrible racial history. On the red Sox side and then across town over at north station, you’ve got this pioneering spirit with one major problem. Most fans didn’t want to watch black players and they didn’t really love basketball, basketball.
[00:29:27] Wasn’t a big sport at the time. And bill Russell had a miserable time. Living in Boston had a very, very difficult, difficult experience in Boston, in terms of how he navigated the city. He used to refer to it as a flea market of racism. And so, and I’m very, very proud guy. And so he was not going to be conciliatory toward the city.
[00:29:47] The city had brought. He won his championships and he had his relationships and then he left. And so that negotiation, that relationship had has been 60 years of attempted [00:30:00] reconciliations and silence in a lot of ways. I think things have obviously calmed down now, but for most of the time you looked at somebody, bill Russell was the greatest champion that this country has ever produced in terms of championing.
[00:30:14] ’cause before he came to the Celtics. He’d won back-to-back championships in college and an Olympic gold medal in 1956 in Melbourne. So this great champion was never really celebrated in Boston. And it’s only been in the last 20, 25 years where you could even see a little bit of a.
[00:30:31] GR: And the wonderful books that you’ve published. You’ve not only focused on baseball and basketball in Boston, your hometown, but you’ve also talked about sports, , across the area, including, what we’re looking at in terms of. A school and, NCA sports. So when I think about sports today from youth to high school, to college, even to the pros, it’s really a multi-billion dollar business and has got a wide appeal amongst pretty energetic fan base.
[00:30:59] The media [00:31:00] will cover it sports. The high school sports, , find its way into our popular culture. Could you talk about the current state of the NCAA and professional sports regarding which leagues are doing a better job than the other and addressing larger racial disparities or even concern it’s about, what does it look like in our national debate?
[00:31:19] Howard: Well, I think that if you go and look at the history of it, I think that sports is always going to be important. And at some point it became America’s religion. If you go back to the 18 hundreds, nobody cared about, I mean, baseball was a sport, but it didn’t matter. I mean, baseball and cycling and walking these in, horse racing later on would become these sports.
[00:31:41] But when you start looking at it in terms of how to become American, you have really three waves. And I think the first wave is. The immigration era where you have this great exit is coming from Europe during the industrial revolution of Italians and Jews and poles and Germans. And how did those kids become American?[00:32:00]
[00:32:00] Their parents didn’t speak English, but they became Americanized by playing sports, by playing baseball in the street and boxing. And in the rest of it, this was the pathway Americanizing for those first generations of immigrants. And the second way. Is the integration error. Once again, when you think about the large American institutions, the institution of sports integrated before all of them sports integrated before most schools sports innovated before the military sports integrated before television sports integrated, before journalism integrated before all of it.
[00:32:31] And so, and especially when you’re looking at it from an inter-collegiate, , perspective, The predominantly white institutions, they weren’t looking at the HBC use for their doctors and their scientists and their lawyers. They wanted their ballplayers. So still at the, root of it all was the, use and utility of the black physical body.
[00:32:51] And that’s really the area where you started to seize the colleges integrate. And then of course you get to this third era, [00:33:00] which is the economic. And now that starting in the mid seventies, when you start to get free agency and baseball, and then obviously as the money gets bigger and all of the sports, the money also gets bigger in college sports.
[00:33:10] And as the money gets bigger and bigger. You see a change in the priority. And one of the arguments had always been in the integration of the athlete was that this was going to be a pathway for these black students, student athletes. They like to call them to have a broader experience, to be exposed to more and to get an education.
[00:33:31] And that there was a trade taking place. You were a physical prowess for the opportunity to be. a college campus. And now you look at it today and we know that a lot of these players aren’t being educated at all. They’re there to make money for their universities. And so that mission in so many ways has been lost.
[00:33:53] And you think about this from the standpoint now where the debate is, whether or not we [00:34:00] should just pay the players. and it’s a good argument to have considering that. the NCAA that college football and college basketball are so incredibly lucrative. And so you’re starting to see some of this change, but while it’s changing, you also have to say whatever happened to educating these students, whatever happened to educating these players.
[00:34:16] And so have we simply given up on that piece of it, and now we’re just going to admit that the players are there to earn they’re there to work, but they’re not, they’re totally.
[00:34:28] GR: good point. You mentioned student athletes and. I think of someone like Arthur Ashe, you played at UCLA tiger woods played at Stanford. the Williams sisters, in Compton playing sports, but mother and father making sure they take their, , academics pretty seriously. They’ve all been pioneering players, in a respective sport.
[00:34:49] And we also think about what that means in terms of. What’s sometimes in our communities call a bear in the cross for the race. Would you share your views about how these athletes were [00:35:00] treated, lessons learned and maybe even how they managed or mismanaged their status as celebrities in American
[00:35:07] Howard: culture?
[00:35:08] Well, I think that what you have. When it comes to black athletes and you see it. I talked about a lot of this in my 2018 book. The heritage, this responsibility that the black athlete has that they’re not supposed to have. And that’s the goal to me at least, is that one day they won’t have it, that black people are the only people in this country who relies so heavily on people who hit a ball with a stick or who put a ball through a hoop or who can run really fast.
[00:35:36] And. This all goes back to this deal that had been made during the 20th century about the ones who made it. The athlete is the one who made it and the athlete is the one who made it even more so than the entertainers. And the difference between. Prince and Michael Jackson’s and Diana Ross’s and beyoncé’s and count bases of the world is that you didn’t need a movement for them to [00:36:00] perform.
[00:36:00] They could always perform for white people. Go back to the cotton club, go back to the, go back. Even earlier into the 18 hundreds, black people have always performed for white people, but sports, you needed a movement sports. You actually had to have a physical movement that led into the civil rights ever even Martin Luther king used to say, you know, that Jackie Robinson was the beginning of the civil rights movement.
[00:36:20] And so because of that, there’s this responsibility that the black athlete has had to bear that cross. And I always refer to the black athlete. They are the most visible, the most successful and the most influential black employees this country’s ever produced. That is not always a compliment, but it is true.
[00:36:38] because this country has spent so much time using sports as the antidote to racism that. Places is it fair? But if my 40 time is faster than yours, if I score more runs than you, if I score more points than you, I get to win, then, that is supposed to be pure. Even though we know in sports, that’s not the case either, [00:37:00] but that has been the argument that sports could provide for us this pathway to what color blind list.
[00:37:05] It really doesn’t exist. But that’s why it’s so important. And that’s why we spend so much time looking at the Serena Williams is of the world and looking at the LeBron James of the world and hoping that they use their platform as we hear so often now the Colin Kaepernick’s that they are the ones who provide for us a level of visibility that really isn’t fair to them, but it is what it has been.
[00:37:30] This is what has been created. And to me, goal really shouldn’t be imploring the black athletes to constantly, you know, speak for black America. But that one day they can just play ball and let’s leave it to other people who are in better positions to lead us
[00:37:49] GR: a great point. In fact, that made me think of a question. When you talked about the black athlete, earlier. Let’s just go to school and just play sports. You’re not truly a scholar athlete. [00:38:00] And we overlooked the fact that our community has got a lot of examples of Scott, our athletes. I mean, I think of someone like, Chris Howard, who is a president of Robert Morris college.
[00:38:10] He went to the air force academy road scholar, doctorate from Oxford. And now he’s a college president, but he was a Campbell award winner when he was in college. And even if you go. Back in time, as you talk about history, you made me think about, uh, Dr. Roscoe brown, who is president of community college in New York, Tuskegee airmen.
[00:38:28] But you know what Biff for Jim brown, he was actually the one who was a major lacrosse player and later became a scholar in his own. Right? How do we close that gap? Or maybe open up the door to opportunity to talk about true scholar athletes, both men.
[00:38:45] Howard: Well, I think it’s a priority. It’s not just a black party.
[00:38:47] It’s a priority period. And what are your priorities? What are your values? What do you respect? And I think that we are completely as a country enamored [00:39:00] with. Lottery, this sort of capitalist lottery that one day you can be famous. I mean, that is not a, that is not even a racial designation. That’s what we all do.
[00:39:08] Everyone wants to play this lottery and, but the stakes are higher when you have less and black people as, uh, as a people have. So this magic bullet, the one who made it is the narrative that we all gravitate toward. And it’s very tiring. It’s very tiring to people in the black community who were like, Hey, this is not all there is.
[00:39:27] And think about what we’re doing to the people who don’t make it. And this whole idea of this narrative being dead or in jail. Well, if I weren’t for sports, I’d be dead or in jail. Well, if that is the case after all of these decades, That being able to bounce a ball is still your best chance. Then we failed.
[00:39:47] We failed miserably and yet that is still the prevailing narrative. And that’s why we pay so much attention to sports, not just because we’re entertained. And it’s amazing to watch Patrick my [00:40:00] homes or to watch Lamar Jackson play football. It’s because this is still the way outside. And it’s very tired and it shows you just how much institutional political failure,
[00:40:16] GR: Well, thanks to the work that you do, both in book, form essays, op-eds but also, , in movies, you’re starting to at least get us thinking us across the board on what it means to be American, what it means to be great, what it means to be a genius, both on the court and off the court, but also realizing that if we can’t get some of this right.
[00:40:38] Outside of sports, then we’re putting so much on the athletes to do, which is unfair to them. But thank you for your, intellectual ism, your humor, your wits, and your common sense approach to issues that are often tough for people to talk about. Thank you for the work you’re doing and,
[00:40:53] Howard: keep it up.
[00:40:54] No, it’s my pleasure. Thank you.[00:41:00]
[00:41:27] Kerry: So the tweet of the week, Gerard is a tweet by education week on February 21st. And I don’t know if you’re into. At all, but my kids are definitely into this new word game. , it’s daily activity and exercise that they have a lot of fun with. And so education, we tweeted out video saying you can pick up on patterns of words, , that matched together to make certain words and use more skills than you think.
[00:41:57] You do when you first start, this was a, for a [00:42:00] fourth grade teacher said that these teachers are using Wordle to teach phonics in their classrooms. So, just a really exciting, creative way of using what is right now, kind of a cultural trend to, , make learning better in the classroom.
[00:42:14] GR: Well, thank you for that tweet of the week.
[00:42:16] And for educating me, I will now take a. And next week’s guest is Linda Chavez, who is a senior fellow at the national immigration forum and the author of, out of the Barrio toward a new politics of Hispanic assimilation. Carrie, again, thank you so much for joining me as a co-host this week really enjoyed what you had to share from your story, but also the advice.
[00:42:40] That you share with all of us about not only entrepreneurship, but about parental choice, but just really to keep us thinking about what I believe is one of the most important social movements in the last quarter century. So glad you were
[00:42:52] Kerry: here with me. Always a pleasure, Gerard. Thanks again. Take
[00:42:55] GR: care, everyone.[00:43:00]
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Host Joe Selvaggi talks with Pioneer Institute’s Senior Healthcare Policy Fellow Josh Archambault about the shortage of doctors in the U.S. and the potential for licensing reform to attract medical expertise from around the world to reduce future healthcare shortages and provide incentives for immigrating professionals to work in underserved communities. Read more in Forbes.
Guest:
Josh Archambault is President and Founder of Presidents Lane Consulting. He is a Senior Fellow at both Pioneer Institute and the Cicero Institute. His work experience has ranged from work as a Senior Legislative Aide to a governor, Legislative Director for a state senator, to years working for think tanks operating in thirty-five states, and in D.C. He is a regular contributor to the influential Forbes.com blog, The Apothecary. Josh holds a master’s in public policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and a B.A. in political studies and economics from Gordon College.
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Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
Joe Selvaggi:
This is Hubwonk. I’m Joe Selvaggi.
Joe Selvaggi:
Welcome to Hubwonk, a podcast of Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston. Americans are facing a doctor shortage. This complex problem is driven in part by the increased medical demands of an aging baby boom generation, as well as the impending retirement of doctors who are themselves in the boomer demographic. While the supply of new doctors is constrained by medical school and residency program capacity, our owner’s licensing process also serves to limit the number of foreign trained doctors, immigrating to ease the supply. Indeed, even the most accomplished medical expert in the world would likely need to repeat his or her residency were they to immigrate to the United States, given the critical and growing shortage of physicians are the reforms to our licensing process that could attract qualified doctors from around the world to help serve the needs of an aging us population. My guest today is Pioneer Institute’s senior healthcare fellow, Josh Archambault. Mr. Archambault’s recent Forbes article entitled “Olympians trust international doctors. Can they help reduce the US physician shortage?” shines a light on the barriers facing foreign trained doctors who want to practice in the United States, but who must face the requirement to repeat residency? His speech suggests that common sense reforms to our poorly designed licensing process could offer the us healthcare system much needed expertise and even provide tools for medically underserved communities to attract much needed doctors. When I return, I’ll be joined by Pioneer institute’s Josh Archambault.
Joe Selvaggi:
Okay. We’re back. I’m Joe Selvaggi. This is Hubwonk. I’m now joined by Pioneer Institute’s senior healthcare fellow, Josh Archambault. Welcome back to the show. Josh
Josh Archambault:
Joe, thanks so much for having me back again.
Joe Selvaggi:
Good. Well, Josh it’s good to have you back. I was intrigued by some of the issues you brought up. You had a, a wonderful article in Forbes just this past week. I believe maybe a week and a half ago. And it was entitled Olympians trust international doctors. Can they help reduce the us physician shortage? I’ll, I’ll paraphrase it and say it brought up an interesting idea that with the Olympics that the ceremonies are finishing up this week our athletes can compete all over the world. They have access to some of the best doctors all over the world, but doctors can’t compete all over the world. They can’t just pick up and, and go where they like. And you wove that into an idea that couldn’t, we do more to help bring these doctors here if they like and perhaps address an impending shortage of doctors. So let’s unpack your argument of the article piece by piece. Let’s talk about, I think it was some of the Olympic athletes, the winter Olympic athletes couldn’t have access to the doctors that they had wanted say more about where, where those Olympic patients are right now.
Josh Archambault:
Yeah. So my co-author Jonathan and I were like many Americans watching the Olympics off and on over the last few weeks. And one of the stories that we were noticing in some of the media coverage repeatedly was just a remarkable amount of surgeries that some of these athletes have gone through to beat, you know, especially those that are in their thirties or so, and, you know, seven knee surgeries. And then I think it speaks couple things. One, one, just the remarkable ability of modern medicine to be able to get athletes who careers would’ve been completely ruined by one of these injuries in the past, and would not have competed again to be back at the top of their game and back at multiple Olympics because of these surgeries. And one of the things that we noticed was many of them were seeking out some specialists in Europe or other parts of the world that some of these top medical professionals, and it dawned on us that actually, while Americans can go and see these, the Olympians can afford or sponsor to go and see these per providers elsewhere, they actually couldn’t provide that same label of service in America.
Josh Archambault:
And there’s a variety of reasons for that. But at the crux of it is if you went, if you’re an internationally trained physician and you want to come to the United States to practice, then you have to repeat your residency. You have to go back to what it would’ve been just after you graduated medical school. And in many cases we’ve heard repeatedly, they’re just not willing to do that for a variety of reasons. And so as we look ahead and look at the physician shortage, this raised a, a barrier and an issue, and there’s a way out of this. There are some states moving forward on it, which we can talk about, but it’s just one of those things that I don’t think most, most average patients really think about, who they can actually see is dictated by whether in where the person was trained.
Joe Selvaggi:
So you, you’re saying if you are the top doctor in the world on a particular surgery and you want to immigrate to the United States along with the attending immigration limitations, perhaps but let’s those aside for a moment you would have to go back to, despite the fact you may have been in the industry 25 years, you’d have to go back and redo your residency as if you had just graduated medical school along with your fellow 25 year olds. And, and do what is, you know, I think it’s been called residency because you essentially reside at the hospital. It’s a pretty intensive low pay retraining for someone who really is a more senior person. So you’re saying all of those doctors would have to start. I won’t say it’s square one, but let’s say not not where they left off in their, in their native country.
Josh Archambault:
That’s right. And so if we think about, you know, America aspiring to be a place of entrepreneurs and innovation, you know, I anecdotally have heard of stories of top of their field surgeons or others living in the EA for example, which they pioneer a certain kind of procedure, but I can’t come, can’t come to Boston, can’t come to New York kind, come to LA, can’t come to Kansas city, can’t come to a rural community to perform that surgery because they would have to go through that. And so I think, you know, there’s many layers to this issue that you mentioned immigration, but I think it comes down to, at the end of the day, is America wanting to be a welcoming land to this innovation, to experts in the medical field. You know, we, we look forward at the demographics in this country, especially for physicians, about 40% of physicians are due to retire by 2030.
Josh Archambault:
And so we’re just outta pure necessity. This is an issue that we need to talk about how many people are going to medical school, how many residency slots are, how, how do we fund those residency slots? Do we have enough providers in rural communities? Do we have enough of them in, under, in underserved urban communities, which is a, a major issue, but getting at just the cutting edge technology and, and medical services that don’t do emerge, do we want those entrepreneurs to feel incentivized and have a clear pathway to be able to come to the United States and practice, or even just come and teach practice here for a couple years to teach some of our medical doctors or surgeons or others to provide that. And right now there is a barrier in the way and states can do it. And what was very interesting about this as we’ve dug into this issue, and we’re not alone, Jeff Dr.
Josh Archambault:
Jeffer, who is the former Dean of Harvard medical school has dug into this as well. Is that in a lot of conversations there doesn’t actually seem to be a reason why that this requirement is on the books. It primarily is just what we’ve always done it this way. And so that really raises questions about, well, that, that doesn’t, if there’s not an actual reason for why this barriers in place, these people have already done residencies in their home country. So why would we require them to repeat it? And it’s a relatively simple change policy change, but of course the devils and the details of what, what countries are, are we allowing individuals to come? Where do we think medical programs are quote unquote equivalent going forward. But beyond those sorts of details, the actual simple concept just let’s make sure that they, they’re not taking a huge hit financially and having to live at the hospital doing 60, 70, 80 hour weeks, when really these are the folks that have 25, 30 years experience, and we wanna make sure that they have that clear pathway here.
Joe Selvaggi:
Sure. I think you, you point out a bunch of very good points in, in your remarks. I will say I don’t wanna sound like a cynic, but one of the reasons I think no one’s advocating for foreign doctors causes is they don’t vote. So they’re not here to advocate on their own behalf, but you point out to, if there’s no reason to change this, in other words, we’ve always done it this way. Why, you know, there’s no impetus to, to change your paper, your, your piece also points to the fact that there’s a projected shortage. You estimate of a, a, a shortage of physicians of 120,000 physicians by 2030. You made some reference to in your last remark to the demographics. We all know about the baby boomers retiring rate of, I think it’s a, the silver tsunami as they call it a rate of 10,000 people every day are retiring. Some of those retirees are, are doctors. So they’re going, you know, those baby boomer doctors are also retiring and will also need doctors themselves. You mentioned 40% of American physicians will be, will be retiring in that time. So why why doesn’t this make more sense? Why in a sense, looking at these inevitable demographics, why wouldn’t this be enough to really stimulate a a force for change?
Josh Archambault:
Well, I, I think we’re optimistic there, there are some states debating this as we speak Arizona, Missouri, Wisconsin, there’s bills filed there, moving on this exact issue. And I think it’s only going to grow, but let let’s peel back the onion a little bit. I think there’s a couple confounding issues that are making this worse, not only the demographics, but, you know, if you step back and say, do, do we have enough doctors or medical students coming through the pipeline to replace those that are gonna retire the answers? No we simply don’t. I, and so there is a debate to be had, and we’ve had this in Massachusetts over the years of do we have enough medical schools? Do we have enough entities training, the next generation of physicians and projections that I’ve seen from multiple organizations to simple answers? No, we do not have enough.
Josh Archambault:
We do not have enough individuals who are going into medicine able to replace this, but then the secondary issue becomes, do we actually have enough residency slots? Because that is in all 50 states for physicians and a requirement to be licensed, they have to go through the residency slot. Third answer is no, we don’t have enough residency slots. And so while we’re not graduating enough for those that we are graduating, there are still thousands of them every single year year that don’t get matched in a residency slot. Well, if you don’t get a residency slot, then you’re not able to get licensed in practice. So we’re losing them, we’re pay. They are. And we are investing all of this money to train them. And yet we do not have enough residency slots for them to go to a lot of those individuals. If they don’t get matched, maybe the second time around the second year, they will leave medicine.
Josh Archambault:
They won’t take any job in the field and they’ll go do something else. And what a loss for us as a country, what a loss for patients when access is such such an issue, then you layer onto that, that you, there is a pathway for internationally trained physicians. Once they come outta school to come, if they haven’t done a residency slot at home, they’re gonna have to apply for one of these residency slot where we do not have enough to begin with and they’re in competition. So then we end up at the, that kinda last stop of this discussion, which is what the piece is about, which is for an individual who’s already done. Let’s just say in the UK or in Canada has already completed the residency. We’re now putting them into the pool to compete for not enough slots. And it really is head scratching.
Josh Archambault:
When you start think about the way that the system has been set up. And I think that’s the crux of so many issues that we have in healthcare. There was not an original design to end up where we are now. It just evolved into what it is. And so we at times need to stop and pause and think about, okay, we’re probably not going to start from scratch in many instances here, but we can adjust and make sure that there are pathways that are common sense that are meet the needs of patient, meet the needs of physicians. And this is one of them to say that if an individual has actually already done a residency, we’re not gonna throw them into this quagmire that we have already of not having enough slots and there’s are reforms needed in Medicare. That has to do with medic with residency slots, there’s reforms needed for medical schools. Like those are whole other conversations that need to be had in this country. But at minimum, we can start with the low hanging fruit. I think you’re going to see a growing effort and focus on this because just outta pure necessity of, we need to find more sources of highly qualified providers to be able to come in to.
Joe Selvaggi:
So me to unpack what you’ve just described, you say, okay, look, we need more doctors we’ve established that, right. Particularly going forward. So we have kids going into undergrad at bio majors, premeds. We got plenty of those going in. Then they go into medical school, I suppose. They’re, you know, that funnel gets a little narrower at that point. Then they leave medical school and they need to enter one of these precious residency is, and I think your paper mentions something like 2200 medical students don’t find a, a, a program. So this seems like the limiting constraint here in the, in the process. So some who don’t go into D don’t get their residency go become, I don’t know what, what they become perhaps. I don’t know. But they they don’t become doctor. And so ultimately at the end of the pipeline, we have American born doctors.
Joe Selvaggi:
What you’re saying is if we could do some meaningful, intelligent reform on allowing international doctors to move here, practice here, and in a sense avoid needing to go back to your residency. Not only does it provide a, a poll and other words, they, they don’t have to forego income and time and become a resident again. So we have that pull, but also they’re not, they’re not crowding out American born medical students who also are competing for those residencies. In other words, it’s, it’s, win-win the doctors who are already in the pipeline, the, it, they’re not competing with these international doctors. And those of us who need here, who don’t wanna wait a long time in a waiting room have more doctors to choose from. Am I summarizing your, your points there?
Josh Archambault:
Yeah, it’s absolutely true. And, and just to be very clear, I mean, they could be American born, or they could be international students who come to American medical
Joe Selvaggi:
School. Yes. I, I didn’t mean to mean, I’m not sure, sure. I’d be native. I just, yeah,
Josh Archambault:
No, absolutely. And so it’s just, you know, medical graduates of medical institutions and, and, and what’s interesting is you have seen a number of in the Caribbean in particular, there are a couple institutions who are actually drawing quite a fewer down to the Caribbean to be trained who have very good relationships with trying to place in residency slots when they, those Americans are ready to come back to the United States. And so you’re seeing these individuals and to what, what what’s interesting is like, there are more people who want to go to med school than are able to go. So there’s actually the filtering. There’s been lots of questions about whether the narrowing is actually a beneficial thing. Are, are those not getting into medical school actually less qualified? And I’ve seen research saying, no, these are individuals that if there were slots, they would be just as good medical providers, if there were just more slots in medical school to begin with.
Josh Archambault:
So yeah, there’s certainly an issue there. I, I think the other thing that we see emerge in this debate is, well, where are these individuals going to go? Are they going to settle in urban areas or they’re going to settle in rural areas. And some of the states that are debating this reform do say that we, you can, we’re going to, you can skip the residency slot. If you go into one of the critical access that areas and you need to live there. And anecdotally what’s very interesting is on the loan repayment side, in rural American, in particular, where this is probably the most acute in some communities there’s been loan repayment programs trying to get medical students to come out, to serve well, in essence, a lot of them will come get their loan forgiven and then move somewhere else. But for a lot of these internationally trained physicians, they’ll come, they’ll bring their families, they’ll settle in the community and they’ll become deeply part of that community.
Josh Archambault:
And so that’s why you, we’re seeing a lot of rural hospitals and others excited about this sort of reform to say, Hey, we’re not just looking for somebody to come and serve for two to three years, five years, but we want somebody to come here and live here 20 or 30 years. And so while this is and I don’t wanna oversell it, this is not a silver bullet reform to the, the physician shortage issue, but it is certainly a tool in the toolbox. It seems to be very common sense, the benefits, not only the physician in their family, the hospital patients in particular. And I just think we need to make sure that we pause and how policy makers be aware of this, that with a relatively easy change, they can create this pathway for these physicians to come if they would like to.
Joe Selvaggi:
So you’re saying these programs now work deliberately to encourage or entice doctors away from, let’s say urban areas like a Boston towards more rural areas, let’s say Western part of our own state, right. Here in Massachusetts it’s probably under doctored and I would hazard guess at Boston has more doctors per square mile than any place on earth. So so you’re saying what rural communities typically do is perhaps have some loan forgiveness program to, to encourage a doctor out. What a international program I do is go directly to the international doctrine and say, if you move here you know, we, we will be supportive. And what you’re saying that even more so than the loan repayment is a stickier relationship. The international doctor who comes over and moves his family here is more likely to stay in that rural community than the counterpart from a, a us medical school, once his loans repaid, he may pack up and go back to Boston.
Josh Archambault:
Yeah. That, that, and I, haven’t seen a lots of research done on that. That’s more anecdotal from talking to people who are you know, trying to attract providers. And I, I think it doesn’t just apply to physician. I think it applies to nurse practitioners and nurses and others because you know, the shortage of medical high quality medical providers is extremely acute at this moment. Not just because of COVID, but because of a lot more mobility, I mean, it, some future episode, Joe, we can talk about the nurse shortage issue that is out there and the amount of hospitals and others that are using traveling nurses, individuals who only come in for three months or six months, and then move on. I mean, having a culture of care at the highest quality when you have your staff turning over every three to six months of individuals moving, not to say that these are not good providers, but just difficult when you’re having new personalities come in, having to, to learn new systems.
Josh Archambault:
So if you’re able to get providers, whether it’s a physician, not way down to a nurse, who’s there and is living in the community and not going to move on in three to six months, that is by far the preference going forward. And we’re having an unprecedented amount of disruption happen in our, a lot of medical settings, both urban and rural. And so we have to look at some of these alternative ways to make sure that individuals that wanna come and if even 50% of them settle down in their community and become really valuable parts of that community, that’s a huge win. And, you know, I think the last thing I would just say here, Joe, about the numbers of what we’re talking about is this has been a little bit of a chicken and an egg debate of trying to understand will a lot more physicians come.
Josh Archambault:
If they know that they have to go through the residency slots there is a visa program that allows individuals to come currently right now and not all of those visa slots are taken every year. And the speculation for years has been beats because of this barrier. And so I think interestingly, if a few states pass this, we’re gonna find out in the next five years or so, whether that is in fact, the primary area for these trained physicians to come, or whether it’s other issues they don’t know about the opportunity. They’re not being recruited. Maybe it’s the systems are just different between some of these countries, but when you’re talking about Israel, Australia, the UK, Canada, Ireland, but these systems are close enough. In many people, we have seen individuals come into the country out of these countries and do a fellowship, be here for 10 years and maybe go back home due to family reasons. It, it is not that big of a stretch to see that you would see more flow back and forth of physicians coming and actually becoming and settling down.
Joe Selvaggi:
Well, I like to say often when we’re talking about topics here on hub long, I say our audience are not just they’re not into just merely our ideas or think tank, but we’re also a do tank. You, as you say, there’s many layers to this question but medical staff stability. But to in the wake of the disruption of COVID is something that benefits all of us. Of course, the doctors and the nurses wanna be stable. The patients themselves wanna see the same familiar face when they are, when they’re sick. What can listeners and I, I really wanna address more of the state level. Of course immigration can be more of a national issue, but let’s address what we could do as a state. If policy makers are listening to this show and this strikes a chord with them, what, what could we do?
Josh Archambault:
Yeah, I think there’s probably two pathways here. You know, first is the legislature of the general court, certainly could pass a law model of one of the other bills that have been filed around the country that creates an explicit pathway. And those bills typically have done a few things. The one, the first one is they’ve actually named a number of countries. And to say, we are gonna have some sort of reciprocity here that if you have attended a medical school, and there is entities international entities who certify these schools. And so if you attend one of these schools in one of these countries that are recognized, then if you would like to come and practice in the United States, you still need to meet every other requirement that the board of licensure has, but you do not need to repeat your, the residency as we’ve been speaking about that at least brings clarity that allows medical institutions, hospitals, to know that they can go out and recruit at these international program and say, or other facilities and say, you know, we really would like to have you come and practice at our hospital because of the high quality work that you are doing and let people know here’s the process to do that.
Josh Archambault:
You no longer have this multi-year barrier in place. So it’s that simple. I do think that in many cases, including Massachusetts, the boards themselves could be a lot more explicit. I think this is an education gap, more than anything. It’s just to say, this is something that you can do to set up a process in which individuals to say, here are the criteria that we are looking for. You need to be in good standing back home. You need to have gone to one of these schools. You need to have not had major liability issues in the last few you years going forward, we need to see your records. We need to see how you did in school. It, you completed school, all of those kind of basic things that we would want to double check before somebody comes, but it’s often the gray area here that leads to, I think, hesitation for people going forward so that states could very easily pass a law. Or I think the boards could really clearly articulate out to say, this is the pathway that we’re going to have going forward, and we’re gonna welcome open the door to these individuals that wanna come practice.
Joe Selvaggi:
But a wonderfully interesting experiment will be if we can get this all going. I think to myself as a, as a city guy myself we see a lot of immigrants all the time. Usually the urban center is where immigrants start. Certainly my grandparents, that’s how they went. I can imagine seeding our rural communities with very well educated people from other places. It may, may change our our culture, right? We, the people pillars are our community are our, our medical professionals coming from elsewhere. May, may change our sort of a notion of what people from other places look like are like it may, I think have a very beneficial effect on just our, our our view of the world. If, if the person curing your kid or your mom is from somewhere else it may have, have a, take a different look on, on the rest of the world. I’m, I’m just offering that as an aside, as a, as a, a thoughtful idea. This has been very informative. Is there anybody taking lead up on our state house in our state house on beacon hill, someone a Crusader for, for the cause of international medical doctors. I met asking you this, not knowing if you do have an answer, I I’ll just throw that out there
Josh Archambault:
To date. There is not I think that this is an open opportunity for the conversation to start in Massachusetts.
Joe Selvaggi:
Oh, good. All right, we’ll leave it there then, then thank you very much, Josh. That it was a great great article in, in Forbes. Congratulations on getting it in there and thanks for helping make this, you know, this somewhat our Keene piece of information more familiar to our listeners. I, I think this could not gonna solve the problem, but we, we are moving towards finding a solution. So thank you very much. Thank you.
Joe Selvaggi:
This has been another episode of Hubwonk, a podcast of Pioneer Institute. If you enjoyed today’s episode, there are several ways to support the show. It would be easier for you and better for us. If you subscribe to Hubwonk on your iTunes podcast, catcher, if you’d like to help make it easier for others to find Hubwonk, it would be great if you offer a five-star rating or a favorable review, we’re always grateful. If you share Hubwonk with friends, if you have ideas or suggestions or comments for me about our episodes, you’re welcome to email me at Hubwonk@pioneerinstitute.org. Please join me next week for a new episode of Hubwonk.
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This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Dinesh Wadhwani, founder and CEO of ThinkLite, LLC in Natick, Massachusetts, and immigrant from Ghana. His journey began when his grandfather was forced to flee India, and built a business in Ghana that paved the way for the generations to come. When Dinesh moved to the United States in 2008 as a student at Babson College, he was determined to build a life and a business here in the U.S. While he was studying entrepreneurship, he became one: in just a few short years, his technology-based life science solutions business expanded across the globe and evolved into a life-saving enterprise, purifying the air in hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic, as you’ll learn in this week’s JobMakers.
Guest:
Dinesh Wadhwani, Founder and CEO of ThinkLite, is an industry expert and serial entrepreneur in the electronics and optics industries. ThinkLite is currently present in 14 countries worldwide, owns several patents, and works with Fortune 500 companies, townships and enterprises across the globe. Dinesh works with his close-knit team of engineers to create “high value add” lighting solutions that solve larger problems beyond efficiency. Examples include pharmaceuticals, agriculture, poultry, data centers, general health and most recently, a technology solution that is able to track the levels of pathogens in the air in indoor public areas and facilities, including COVID-19, amongst other viruses; so that they can be addressed, and managed effectively to maximize safety in a facility. Dinesh has been a nominee for The Immigrant Learning Center’s Immigrant Entrepreneur Awards. He was recognized by Inc. Magazine’s 2015 top under 30 Entrepreneur of the Year; a “Top 50 Power Influencer in Massachusetts, 2018” by Boston Business Journal, and has been recognized by the White House as being part of the top young entrepreneurs in the country, creating high impact and employment in the USA.
Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
Denzil Mohammed:
I’m Denzil Mohammed, and this is Jobmakers,
Denzil Mohammed:
Migration stories. Aren’t always simple. Families might have moved to different countries in different generations for different reasons. However, it is that entrepreneurial spirit of leaving everything behind taking a risk and working for better in a new land that not only keeps them going, but drives innovation and resourcefulness for Dinesh Wadhwani, founder and CEO of ThinkLite LLC in Natick, Massachusetts, immigrant from Ghana, that journey began with his grandfather who was forced to flee India for another British colony. And despite having to work all alone from nothing, he was able to build a business in Ghana and pave the way for the generations to come. When Danes moved to the United States in 2008, as a student at Babson College, the mandate from his father was clear, build a life and a business in the US and not returning to Ghana. And that’s just what Dinesh did. Even while he was studying entrepreneurship. He became an entrepreneur in just a few short years. His technology-based life science solutions business expanded across the globe and evolved into a life saving enterprise, purifying the air in hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic. As you’;; learn in this week’s Jobmakers.
Denzil Mohammed:
Dinesh Wadhwani, founding CEO of ThinkLite, welcome to Jobmakers. How are you?
Dinesh Wadhwani:
I’m very well. Thank you, Danzil. Thank you for having me here today. I appreciate it.
Denzil Mohammed:
So give us a 30-second pitch about your business. What is ThinkLite all about?
Dinesh Wadhwani:
So ThinkLite is a technology company based out of the Boston area here in Massachusetts. We specialize in high-end technologies, specializing in facilities, we started off in the energy space, which, which has grown into a, a large division and a company that there’s high-end efficiency lining for commercial applications. We, we have a division that does grow lighting for agriculture and poultry optimization. And most importantly, which has comes down to stage the last few years, we have an air division that specializes in very tiny particulate monitoring of viral loads in the air, in the healthcare space. And as you can imagine, that has kind across boundaries to go well beyond healthcare for the last few years. So that’s what we do as a company.
Denzil Mohammed:
So apart from the obvious, which is the pandemic and your most recent foray into the airspace why is your business important in today’s world?
Dinesh Wadhwani:
Our ethos really is we, I think like we call ourselves technologists, we love technology. We believe technology is gonna save our world and we love to build things that create value in a very impactful way. That’s really who we are and what we are all about. And, and our supply chain extends from designing stuff in Boston to Germany, where we do a lot of engineering and to Asia, where we do a lot of the semiconductor manufacturing and we work very closely with Samsung as well. And so South Korea. So, so if you think about it, given the talent that we are fortunate to have cultivated over the years and our interest and what we believe in we have always felt that we want to build products and services and bring it to the world in a very innovative but effective way that can add a value for sustainability, for wellbeing and for challenging the wasteful practices of, you know, of our current planet.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
And we started there with, you know, bringing to market, you know, the first of its kind ultra efficient, we were 30 to 50% more efficient than traditional and about 90% more efficient than your traditional fluorescent fly. And then that evolved into smart building and smart lighting, because that was kind of where the opportunity became now that you had efficient lighting. What else can you do if you made them smart and turn them on and off and dim them, you could further optimize it. And then that kind of pivoted into how can we use everything we know about lighting and smart buildings to add value beyond it, energy savings. And this kind happened around 2015, where we were studying together in the executive team. And I, and we said, if you think about it, it’s kind of quite an quite an amazing phenomenon that you have lights almost every feet in the building with a fixture electricity come up through it. It gotta do more than just save you money. And that’s when we said, how can we apply everything we know about small building, smart building automation, mind manipulating spectrums of light and creating different waves of light and marrying that with other chemical compositions to add value in a different way. And, and that’s how we got into our agricultural lighting. We got into poultry lighting and then along the same concepts, and around the same time we got into how we could use light spectrum to do this infection as well.
Denzil Mohammed:
So Dinesh, you’re from Ghana originally grew up speaking English and your grandparents were from India. Is that right?
Dinesh Wadhwani:
That’s correct. Yes.
Denzil Mohammed:
So this is a very fascinating, but of also a very common story of migration, not only from India, but from other countries, but take us back and tell us exactly what happened, how and why.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
Sure. My granddad was actually one of seven brothers and he was our original hometown is a state called Sen in the North Western part of India. And during the 1940s and the time of colonization when India was being divided into India and Pakistan, a lot of people in the middle kinda lost their homes. Cause you know, what was considered a general area was it’s now being divided politically into different countries. So my granddad and his and his brothers actually went to hide, you know, British votes to prevent being a prisoner of war or going to fight. And these votes were trading with other British colonies at that time. And, and that’s literally how my, my granddad ended up in Ghana, Western Africa, which at that time was a, was a British colony as well. And many of his brothers, you know, ended up in Hong Kong.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
So today, you know, fast forward, you know, 60, 70 years, we have a lot of family there and some came to the us, but it was a, it was a common practice of those who didn’t wanna be part of the political situation and wanted to leave would go to the other colonies that you know, was, was, was ruling the countries at that at those times. So my granddad went there and, and, you know, he, he made a living for himself. He, he adapted, he was an entrepreneur and raised a family there. And that’s when my dad was born and that’s when my brother myself and my younger sister were born. And that became home.
Denzil Mohammed:
That’s really fascinating. But again, as you said, it, it’s, it’s not an uncommon story. And just to be clear, your, your grandfather’s options were really slim. It was either fighting a war convert to Islam or escape. Right.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
Right. And, and many would actually seek refuge in India. And, and many people did that, where they would go, but start from scratch. Right. They, they didn’t have a home state. They lost all your property. They lost all your jobs. They lost all their land and just have a start from scratch.
Denzil Mohammed:
And you, obviously, you we’re able to straddle to very different, I would say kinds of cultures Western Africa, Indian subcontinent. So how is your experience of being an immigrant from another country, you know, has that impacted your business style or, or the kinds of goals you set for yourself?
Dinesh Wadhwani:
Yeah, definitely. I, and I think most, most immigrants who come to the us for better opportunities or for a better, better life can probably relate to this is there’s so many things over here in the us that many people take for granted and, and growing up, we were not exposed to many of these facility or still infrastructure stuff like internet. I remember growing up, there were times where Ghana during the nineties had something called load shedding, where there was not enough lecture study on the grid. So they would publish in the newspaper that for this week from 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM, you’re not gonna have electricity. Right. So I remember when my brother and I would come home and we had to finish all our homework before it gets dark. Cause when it gets dark, you there’s nothing much you can do with a candle, go to bed.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
Right? Little things like this, where we, we grew up of being the norm and that’s the life we need. And when we, when I came to the us you realized how much more advanced the infrastructure is. And, and you realize how much of an opportunity this is to be able to have faster internet, to be able to have good roads or infrastructure, to move around, to meet people. And, and to me, there is so much here to be grateful of that we didn’t have growing up. And that changes your perspective, you know, and, and, you know, most immigrants status that, you know, the United States is a lot of opportunity because there is a good infrastructure that creates enough opportunity for you, you to come from nothing. Right. I remember when I came here, I didn’t know anybody. And it’s not, it’s less about who, you know, specifically, which how it works back home in Ghana too.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
You could, you could now have a lot of information and have a lot of skills, but it comes down to, you know, who, you know, for the most part, while that is important over here, of course, you know, this so many cases we see every single day where someone would come far away from, from country knowing no, no one, but worked really hard. Worked honestly worked in to develop certain skills and become successful. And I think it’s just very well balanced society that we have in the us that creates a platform for doing that. So it makes me always grateful what we have here. Most countries don’t have that. And, and it changes your attitude. You wake up every morning and you say, you gotta seize. This opportunity
Denzil Mohammed:
Makes you more humble, more grateful, more appreciative that that’s fascinating to,
Dinesh Wadhwani:
But it does,
Denzil Mohammed:
You know, 12 hours a day. You don’t have electricity that, isn’t that just crazy to think about now. Yeah. So you came to the us in 2008 as a student on your student visa, you went to Babson cause you already spoke English, but adapting to the US culture is always a challenge and an experience for everyone.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
So my dad would say through my entire high school and when I was starting, when I wanted, where I want to go to school, what I wanna study, he would say, Hey, listen, you have a good plan B if things don’t work out, you know, you can always come back to Ghana and we can either you work in the family business, or, you know, we, we are Old Timers here and we can find some opportunities for you, but frankly go through the United States, make a better life for yourself and don’t come back. Right. And, and that was the message that, you know, he, he gave me and my brother when, when we came here to study. And, you know, when I, when I came in Atlanta, Logan app, I remember it was the day before probably orientation and I land. And, and I still remember this the day till today is like, okay, here’s where I gotta make my life. Right. My goal is to learn, obviously, you know, make new relationships and meet new people, but it’s really gonna make a living for myself. And the goal is to make the family proud and take advantage of, you know, my education and what I’m coming here to do of what they have sent me here to do and, and not go back.
Denzil Mohammed:
So you found it ThinkLite in 2009, in just a few years, you were in 14 different countries. Like that must have been a rollercoaster.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
It was. And, I would say that that almost every single connection of that in came from the Babson community, which is quite incredible. It’s very international as you probably know, and a lot of friends and I was fortunate enough to be on the scholarship program on my back. So I had the opportunity to meet with the trustees who also were from all over the world and they would be intrigued with and, and what would be doing. And it was, it was quite a very supportive, you know, environment where I remember doing classes where I would tell the professor, I got a over the next three weeks because we have these, you know, big projects or big deals that I think I have to be there for. And the professor would say, keep a diary of it and I’ll accept it as thesis, you know very real and, and, and, and very quickly given the small community was many of the professors, the Dean, the president at that time were following ThinkLite very closely.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
And today I’m so ever grateful to them because of the support that I received. And they would be making introductions all the time and the exposure we got, you know, within the us, of course, but even internationally was we got to seize the opportunity. So the next thing I know, they would say, this is incredible technology and you are spending a lot of money for businesses and make more of impact in the US, you know, can you come and do it, you know, in the United Kingdom, can you come and do it in Thailand? Can you come and do it in Singapore? And I was like, absolutely. And they would say, and, you know, they, they would, they would literally treat, treat it like a real business and they would say, okay, great. You have a team that can come over and train people. And I would say, yes, let’s go. And there was, I would forget many times that I’m still still in college, you know, and I have to attend class and I would say, I’ll come back and catch up. And, and I would go, so it was throughout, you know, from 2010, all the way up to 2015 there was a lot of expansion internationally where we were building a foundation in those countries where we had large distributors and, and we were making all impacts without technologies over there, which fostered growth in the US and vice versa too.
Denzil Mohammed:
You’re not quite doing exactly what you did at the beginning. So, so tell us how the pandemic impacted your business.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
Sure. So, you know, around 2015, we made a conscious decision of how can we leverage our technology, our experience, our relationships, and the marketplace to do more than just save energy, right. Like I mentioned before, and I think the single most important change that I personally experienced and at the company was we start an, an initiative to say each time we would close a, a big project and go do a lighting project for them. I would like to speak to the head of facilities or the head of our operations myself personally, and say, can you please tell me a little bit more about the other problems you’re facing when you’re challenging in your workplace or your facility? One of the biggest things that really changed the trajectory of our company was this initiative to ask customers what else we can do for them.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
And that’s why we learned a lot more. We learned more about a lot more opportunities that we can address, whether it was, they have good lighting, but it wasn’t smart enough, or they had good lighting, but they needed to have a unique spectrum of light to increase their yield of produce, or when talking to hospitals, which is most, most relevant. You know, in this day and ages, we were working with Boston children’s hospital back in 2017. And, you know, we learned from the facilities, people that they, this number one challenge was hospital acquired infection to via the air. And this is not something that’s unique to any particular hospital. This is something that exists forever, right? And if you think about it, when people come to the hospital, well, you’re sick. You know, dear coughing, you’re spreading terms of diseases. And simultaneously you have people there who are undergoing surgery, or who have compromised immune systems who are unwell.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
And these two groups of people are on the same roof, sharing the same air. It’s quite a recipe for disaster. And, and unfortunately there’s no better way, right? I mean, that’s just the nature of, of, of how the facilities and what happens all the time, which really caught my heart was the number one cause of debt in our country was secondhand transmission of germs in these hospitals. And, and, and I’m discussing that saying, we are replacing fixtures every three feet. They’re gonna be a better weight. And that’s when the idea of producing a light fixture that can also purify the air at the same time was born. And that evolved into less leverage of technology to now monitor it and make it smart. So we even know how bad the air is to start with, and we can always keep it that way. And then it evolved into let’s make connected to the HVAC system.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
So it could be even smarter and involved into, you know, less external alone units. Here. We have found a software, we built an entire ecosystem of technology that could monitor the air, tell you if there’s a viral load in the air light fixtures that would seamlessly clean the air free of these viral particles. And the whole world was, you know, coming to a standstill because of an airborne virus. And it, it, it took COVID 19 or global pandemic for people to realize that you don’t need to be in a hospital to, to share air with someone to get disease from that that’s when, for the first time we learned that what we thought was a niche in the healthcare world is now something that is applicable everywhere else. And, and that’s how the pandemic really changed our ThinkLite air division. And next thing we know our marketplace just, you know, expanded by infinite-fold really of the addressable market.
Denzil Mohammed:
Oh, wow. Dinesh. That’s incredible. So finally, Dinesh, as an immigrant to the us, you know, your grandparent was, was taken in by Ghana and you were taken in by the us and this country has allowed you, your family and your business to thrive. How do you feel about the United States of America as, as your adopted homeland?
Dinesh Wadhwani:
There’s a very admirable amount of respect in this country for people who work hard for people who are trying to make a positive impact. And, you know, whoever you share with, in my experience, what you’re trying or what our business is about they’ll say, Hey, talk to this person. Or, you know, have you thought of that? And, this, this celebration of solving problems in this country, I feel this country as a whole really promotes entrepreneurship and promotes originality. It promotes, trying to just do good. And by doing good, trying to create good value for people, very few people can say that about the experience going to any other country really, and, and being embraced and being part of the community to say, Hey, we are here creating, creating impact, creating jobs for the people in the country is really, it is really a nice, a nice feeling. So I’m, I’m always gonna be grateful to this country for that.
Denzil Mohammed:
I think one of the things that makes the United States extra special is that it celebrates entrepreneurship and innovation no matter where you come from
Dinesh Wadhwani:
That’s right.
Denzil Mohammed:
You know, it’s the idea, it’s the hard work and it’s the value that creates it. And I hope that you, and ThinkLite are able to continue creating value and having a positive impact and purifying our air. Please, we need that a lot. Absolutely. We will continue doing our best to educate people on, on this topic. That is, that is so important and affects their bottom line, right?
Dinesh Wadhwani:
Yes, that’s right. And thank you. And it’s a joy to see the impact that the immigrant learning center does in empowering, you know, whether it’s by your language, by your life skills, then it’s, it’s always been close to my heart. So it’s, I, I admire that. And it’s such an important thing that we need to have for people who come here with, you know, with, with a twinkle in the eye and for opportunity and giving them these skills and giving them these tools to, to help them fulfill their dreams is something that’s close to my heart. So, so thank you for that.
Denzil Mohammed:
That’s very nice for you to say, Dinesh, thank you so much, Dinesh Wadhwani, founder and CEO of ThinkLite. Thank you for joining us on JobMakers.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
Thank you, Denzil true pleasure.
Denzil Mohammed:
Job makers is a weekly podcast about immigrant entrepreneurship and contribution produced by pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston and the Immigrant Learning Center in Malden, Massachusetts, a not for profit. That gives immigrants a voice. Thanks for joining us for today’s incredible story of immigrant entrepreneurship, but comments, questions, or know someone we should talk to email Denzil that’s D E N Z I L @ Jobmakers.podcast.org. I’m Denzil Muhammad. See you next Thursday at noon for another job makers.
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“A lot of the families have to sacrifice and work multiple jobs… And just scraping together enough money to just make tuition, just the basics.”
“It is discriminatory, that parents who want to choose an alternative to public school for their children, would not in any way receive any compensation for that, whether it be tax credit, whether it be a voucher…”
In the 1840s, nativist movement leaders formed official political parties and local chapters of the national Native American Party (later the American Party), although they continued to be commonly known as the Know-Nothing Party. Politicians sought to insert provisions into state constitutions against Catholics who refused to renounce the pope. The Know-Nothing movement brought bigotry and hatred to a new level of violence and organization.
The party’s legacy endured in the post-Civil War era, with laws and constitutional amendments it supported, still today severely limiting parents’ educational choices. A federal constitutional amendment was proposed by Speaker of the House James Blaine prohibiting money raised by taxation in any State to be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations. These were then named the Blaine Amendments of 1875.
in recent decades, often in response to challenges to school choice programs, the U.S. Supreme Court has demonstrated great interest in examining the issues of educational alternatives and attempts limit parental options. Massachusetts plays a key role in this debate. The Bay State was a key center of the Know-Nothing movement and has the oldest version of Anti-Aid Amendments in the nation, as well as a second such amendment approved in 1917. Two-fifths of Massachusetts residents are Catholic, and its Catholic schools outperform the state’s public schools, which are the best in the nation.
Help families like the Costons in Michigan to end the bigoted Blaine amendments in their state that are blocking tuition scholarships and other types of financial support that would make it possible for families to send their children to high-quality schools that are best suited for their children.
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This week on “The Learning Curve,” co-host Gerard Robinson and guest co-host Kerry McDonald talk with Howard Bryant, a senior writer for ESPN and the author of nine books, including Full Dissidence: Notes From an Uneven Playing Field and The Heritage: Black Athletes, A Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism. Bryant shares how his experiences as a student, baseball fan, and sportswriter growing up in 1970s-era Boston have shaped his understanding of race relations and sports. He discusses celebrated American athletes who have broken barriers, from Jackie Robinson and Celtics legend Bill Russell to the Williams sisters and Tiger Woods. Bryant describes how these pioneering athletes were treated, and how they handled their celebrity status. He also offers thoughts on how the multi-billion-dollar professional sports industry is addressing larger racial disparities.
Stories of the Week: In San Francisco, a recall election ousted three members of the Board of Education, after a period of remote learning challenges, controversial school renaming process, admissions policy changes, and other issues. Democratic strategists are raising concerns about their party’s weak positioning on education issues, which will likely continue to play a major role in this election cycle.
Tweet of the Week
Videos: “You can pick up on patterns of words or phonemes and graphemes that match together to make certain words, and you use more skills than you think you do when you first start,” a 4th grade teacher said. https://t.co/2WbJMxAmtb
— Education Week (@educationweek) February 21, 2022
News Links
Education, traditionally a strength, has Democrats on their heels
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/02/21/democrats-education-politics-race-covid/
In Landslide, San Francisco Forces Out 3 Board of Education Members
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/16/us/san-francisco-school-board-recall.html
Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
[00:00:00] GR: Listeners. This is Gerard Robinson. Welcome to another wonderful session of The Learning Curve. Recently, I’ve had an opportunity to cohost with someone else who you’ve already heard from, and this week I get a chance to co-host again. My regular cohost Cara is trotting around the earth, and so we want to make sure her and her family’s got a great time.
[00:00:39] But we always want to make sure that we get great people on here, uh, , to talk to our guests and to also talk to you. And so of course, we reached out to Kerry McDonald who has been with us before and Kerry, welcome back to The Learning Curve.
[00:00:52] Kerry: Oh, it’s great to be back with you, Gerard. Thanks for inviting me
[00:00:56] GR: or things for you.
[00:00:58] Carrie: Things are doing great. my [00:01:00] primary work is with a foundation for economic education. The country’s oldest free market think tank. And I just launched a new podcast, the liberated podcast, which is a weekly podcast on, education related issues that kind of connect to free markets and individual Liberty.
[00:01:16] GR: Well, I’ve definitely retweeted, several of the posts that you sent out and you always keep things really interesting. So when we talk about polls, we also talk about stories and, , I’ve got one story of the week and you’ve got one as well as our guests. I’ll let you kick us off with telling us, the story that.
[00:01:33] Kerry: Sure. So my article I thought was really interesting for us to talk about today is from the Washington post and it is entitled, education. Traditionally, a strength has Democrats on their heels. It was, posted on February 22nd. It looks like, and it really, I think describes some of the challenges that democratic.
[00:01:58] Are confronting and will continue to [00:02:00] confront over the coming months, , in terms of re-election campaigns or, , getting into office. And this was made clear, certainly when we all saw, Virginia governor Glenn Yuncken, , when the gubernatorial race they’re running on a platform of parents matter, , as the kind of contrarion to his opponent who was sort of downplaying the role of.
[00:02:23] In the classroom and education. And I think Democrats are realizing that they have an uphill climb here, in kind of sidelining parents. And, they’re kind of strategizing what they can do about
[00:02:34] Howard: it. As you
[00:02:35] GR: know, both of us are big proponents of parental opportunity, parental choice. And as you mentioned, Virginia, of course, I live here in Charlottesville, supported the governor, also supported, our now Lieutenant governor.
[00:02:47] And the attorney general parents matter, but when you really want to see how much they matter, go after things they think are important. And so in Northern Virginia, when there was a big push to change the entrance [00:03:00] requirements and to Thomas Jefferson high school, arguably the best public high school in the country, when they began to tinker with, what I would often call color coding classrooms, for purposes of equity.
[00:03:11] Legitimately, we should have questions and concerns about equity and opportunity, but it was done in a way that made parents across the racial and economic barriers. Say something about this just seems like you’re trying to cook the books and we don’t like it. And so with that, Also with the fact that Virginia was one of the top five states, to open up their public schools for the least amount of time, , with millions of dollars point in it just made people think differently and ask different questions.
[00:03:39] And so I think what we saw here in Virginia, , is an example of what we may see in other places. And in fact, that leads me to my story of the week, , from the New York times. And it’s focused on the, we call of three school board members in San Francisco. Now let’s go back a year. And when you think of San Francisco, you think about, , the [00:04:00] progressive things, school boards done, you think about the opportunities to try to give low-income students.
[00:04:05] You talk about the city being very progressive and yet when they decided to move forward with a, a plan to say, we’re going to change, the requirements to create a lottery system in order to allow students to go into low high school. my friends who graduated from law would never want me to say that I’m comparing low.
[00:04:25] To Thomas Jefferson in Virginia. But what I will say is that low is arguably one of the best public high schools in the country. Like a Thomas Jefferson. it’s a merit base, system to get in. And they were tinkering with that again, for issues of equity, like a low high school, where approximately 50% of the students are Asian Thomas Jefferson high school.
[00:04:47] even a larger percentage. And so you had that taking place, plus as an, in Virginia, at least in San Francisco, they were not opening up the schools as fast as people would have wanted, even when they were [00:05:00] given a green light by the authorities to do so. And then when you couple that with crusade by some of the members to change the names of some of the schools, understandably some of the names were, are affiliated with horrible aspects of American history.
[00:05:16] And he said, we should change that we should move forward. Will you bring these three things into play parents ask two simple questions. Number one, I hear what you saying, but what are you doing for my children and their education right now? And there wasn’t much, they saw really taking place.
[00:05:31] And number two, they said, well, you as an elected board, What are you going to do to try to change the dynamics of how we move forward? And after a law campaign, three board members were ousted. And to put it in perspective, when you look at the fact that you’ve got, you know, 70% of the voters who turned out and said, listen, we want to recall the members out of the.
[00:05:54] 499,771 registered voters, [00:06:00] 128,862, , were counted and they basically supported the, we call 74, uh, 4% for one candidate and moved 70% for the others. Uh, the board of supervisors would not have to certify the results. those three board members will be replaced by the. the mayor will appoint three new members and then of course there’ll be an election coming forward.
[00:06:19] And so this is just another example of families deciding not to wait for politicians to make decisions for them. they decided to, , vote with their actual vote and to do some things there. So , it’s a big shakeup in that system. this has been the year. , I would say within the last year and a half of school board, uh, recall efforts more than we’ve seen in the last 10 years.
[00:06:43] So San Francisco is an interesting story. And even when we talk about San Francisco as a school system, there are some great things are taking place in this school system. We overlook the fact that there are over night. Private schools in San Francisco that you have approximately 22,000 students in private [00:07:00] schools.
[00:07:00] You have, again, a little more than 55,000 in the school system. Most of them, , many of them, students of color, and so in a place that promotes equity opportunity and equality. Then seem to really pan itself out in the city and the voters have spoken.
[00:07:15] Kerry: Yeah. And I think you’re right. It was a breathtaking recall of those three school board members in what is considered a very left leaning progressive city.
[00:07:24] But yet. Similar themes to what we were just talking about related to the Virginia race and, certainly other democratic races coming up that parents are frustrated, particularly with ongoing coronavirus policies in schools, they want more of a voice. they want school board members to be accountable and to be focusing on the issues that really matter to them.
[00:07:47] And so, you know, I think it would be certainly an interesting campaign cycle. This.
[00:07:51] GR: I remember some years ago when the tea party, , started to make its rise in local state and then national politics,[00:08:00] , speaker Pelosi referred to it as AstroTurf, and then ended up becoming a real grassroots movement. when you take a look at this current recall, there are some people who are saying.
[00:08:09] These aren’t real parents who were fired up. These were really , hedge fund, , executives, , these were millionaires. These were moms and dads, some who didn’t have children, the public school, who are the ones that put up money to support taking neighborhoods for a better San Francisco or other initiatives.
[00:08:29] And when I heard you hear people say that, I said, well, Hey. Even if you don’t have a child in your public school system, you’re still a tax payer. And so you’re paying into that system. Even if you have children in private schools, you also can still vote for someone on the post-school board and in California, which is a big, not only, , it’s a referendum state, you often put things before voters, to do so.
[00:08:49] People from the left and the right put millions of dollars into campaigns every year. In fact, Just recently, with Gavin Newson his, we call race. And so I just find it interesting [00:09:00] when certain groups of people lose, we say it’s money. When they, when we see its voters,
[00:09:06] Kerry: right. And I, again, I think that if politicians continue with this strategy of demonizing parents and, , , painting them as something that they’re not and, you know, criticizing their motives and that sort of thing, it’s just going to backfire, on these politicians.
[00:09:23] GR: The work that you’re doing at your think tank and of course, what you’re learning with your own research and your podcasts, what are you hearing parents say? Are they feeling empowered just across the board. They still feel that their attack where it’s just somewhere in the middle.
[00:09:36] Kerry: Yeah. You know, I’ve been really interested in the flood of education, entrepreneurship that has emerged over the past couple of years.
[00:09:45] Parents demanding more options, wanting various alternatives to an assigned district school, and then entrepreneurs stepping up to create these new options and provide more choices for families. And of course, we’re also seeing it on the [00:10:00] policy side too, with school choice legislation, expanding in many states.
[00:10:04] And there being a lot of momentum for that. And I think we’ll continue to see that. So the combination of education, entrepreneurship, and legislative changes that it expand school choice policies at the state level, think are really going to be a win for families across the country.
[00:10:19] GR: I had an opportunity to travel to Milwaukee, last fall blues, September.
[00:10:24] To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Milwaukee parental choice program. at that, well still is the, urban based, pro-choice school voucher program in the country. I say urban based because as we know, some new England states in fact have had, you know, pro-choice programs, going back to the 19th century, what was so enlightening to me, I would all, maybe, maybe it’s frightening to me where the number of young people that say.
[00:10:49] 25, who, when they heard about, you know, the role that a Polly Williams played As movement, African-American Democrat, state representative, single mom who had one [00:11:00] time was, a campaign person for Jesse Jackson in the eighties when he ran for office, , it was her partnering with, , a Republican governor partnering.
[00:11:09] With other Democrats and some Republicans to say, we want to make this happen. And they were shocked to know ane that there was actually bipartisan support for vouchers at the beginning. And number two, that in fact it was a group of parents who actually pushed for this to happen because in their world, They think what they hear now about parental empowerment is actually new.
[00:11:29] When in fact it’s been going on for decades on both sides of the fence, but at least as it may remains with , , the modern, I would call the modern school choice movement. Many of them really are shocked to know that it used to be bi-partisan and that there was actually a parental voice in this.
[00:11:46] Yeah.
[00:11:46] Kerry: And again, I think , that over the past couple of years, , as parents have been frustrated with school closures and remote learning and unpredictability of, , their children’s classrooms, that’s really, , inspired parents to become more [00:12:00] involved and maybe to look at school choice, when they wouldn’t have previously, they would have made a thought it was a political, angle or not know much about it, and then kind of living it over the past couple of years and saying, gee, my school’s closed for in-person learning.
[00:12:15] Wouldn’t it be nice if I was able to take my tax dollars elsewhere, for example, you know, that kind of, , personalization of school choice, I think has really captured a lot of parents attention.
[00:12:26] GR: Are there some lessons that you think you and I should share? The entrepreneurs who are now involved in the work, uh, families who may be new to the movement, any thoughts , , from our experience that we could share for them to have them avoid some of the pitfalls that we may have seen when we initially got.
[00:12:44] Kerry: That’s such a great question, , for entrepreneurs, I think it’s spotting needs and a demand from parents in specific areas, and then imagining these new possibilities and new solutions beyond perhaps what we think of as conventional schooling. I think that’s one thing,[00:13:00] , that this coronavirus response has triggered is really looking at education beyond schooling and seeing all of the different ways that it can be done.
[00:13:08] I think for example, Startup here in the Boston area called Kai pod learning that participated in the prestigious Y Combinator startup accelerator program in Silicon valley and has some, , investment backing there. And they’re doing some really great things about bringing, , Students together, multi age, kind of a micro school environment in these sort of commercial storefront, , areas with adult facilitators, but the students bring with them an online curriculum or, , some kind of virtual learning system that they’ve created or that they’ve purchased, or perhaps even one of the public ones.
[00:13:42] And then. With other students during the day in these spaces that are facilitated by adults, that, the adults create these enrichment opportunities for kids. And so it kind of breaks down some of the barriers that we see with remote learning, some of the, , separation that students might feel some of the loneliness [00:14:00] That back into kind of a real learning space, but still customizable with kind of the benefits of remote learning. So I think we’ll still continue to see more of those kinds of, , innovations and entrepreneurship. And then the key really, I think for policy makers, , is to remove barriers. Entrepreneurs in general, and especially for education entrepreneurs, lower regulations and, encourage this growth of education alternatives throughout, various
[00:14:27] GR: states.
[00:14:28] I agree. the thing that I would share with entrepreneurs and parents is not to take a legislative victory for granted. legislature has change, either because a change in party or you can still have members of the same party in power, but they can change their point of view. I mean, to think today that you have, Democrats in DC and in state legislatures.
[00:14:52] Arguing to either stop the momentum for charter schools or to try to get rid of them altogether, would have been thought of as [00:15:00] heresy. We think about the fact that, president bill Clinton was the one who helped to create, it became charter school week, the office of charter schools and the department of ed.
[00:15:09] It was in fact in your state, Tom Birmingham, California, Gary Hart. , Mr. Young in Minnesota, it was Democrats. In fact who helped lead the charter school movement and played a strong role in open up those doors of opportunities to family. We’ll fast forward, , today, 30 years later in not looking the same.
[00:15:29] So I would definitely say don’t rest on your laurels because a governor signs, a bill, you have to remain tenacious and follow what’s going on. That means you have to go to all the board meetings, if you can great, but work with organizations, , advocacy groups that actually follow this work because that’s one of the things that shocked me 30 years, , into this work that some of our friends, have become enemies.
[00:15:52] And some of our enemies have become friends and that some people who believe parental choice was important 15 years ago, [00:16:00] think it’s a albatross.
[00:16:02] Kerry: Yeah, I think that’s why it really points to the need for culture change and really kind of reaching the hearts and minds of parents because you’re right. You know, politicians change, political momentum, sways, different directions.
[00:16:15] And so it really is about, showing parents the real benefit of education choice.
[00:16:21] GR: Absolutely anything else you want to share with our listeners? That’s on your mind, maybe even not the article that you read, but something else you want us to know before we go to our guests.
[00:16:31] Kerry: No, I’m really excited for our guests.
[00:16:33] Of course, I’m a Bostonian, a lifelong Bostonian and a sports fan here. So be great to talk to.
[00:16:40] GR: Yeah, listeners, the him, that she’s talking about going to join us. It’s Howard Bryant. He is the author of nine award-winning books focused on sports, , particularly. And so we’ve got some questions for him.
[00:16:54] Look forward to bringing them on board. Now you grew up in Boston. I grew up in Los Angeles, big Dodgers [00:17:00] fan. So that part I won’t hold against you. I’ll try to stay away from some of the, uh, west coast, questions, but, look forward to having him and I look forward to us tack TIMI for that part of the show.
[00:17:09] Absolutely. Okay. We’ll be right.
[00:17:41] Well, I’m so excited to have Howard Brian joined us for a conversation. How it, Brian is the author of nine award-winning book. Full distance, no Trump, an uneven playing ground all the way to books about sisters and champions. The true story of Venus and Serena Williams [00:18:00] illustrated by Floyd Cooper and he’s contributed, essays to 14 others.
[00:18:04] He’s been a senior writer for ESPN since 2007 and has served as a sports correspondent for NPR. It can addition Saturday, since 2006, previously Howard Brian worked at the Washington post, the Boston Herald the record in, Hackensack, New Jersey and the San Jose mercury news. The fact that we’ll also going to add the Oakland Tribune.
[00:18:28] In addition, he’s appeared in several documentaries, including baseball, the 10th inning and Jackie Robinson, both directed by Ken burns and major league. Hank Aaron, which was produced by Smithsonian and major league baseball. Howard, thank you so much for
[00:18:45] Howard: joining us now. It’s my pleasure.
[00:18:46] Thank you for that.
[00:18:47] Kerry: Howard, I’m going to kick us off with some questions. , you grew up in Boston in the 1970s. I’m born and raised in the Boston area and also a big Boston sports fan. Grew up. I grew up in the [00:19:00] south shore in Weymouth. Yeah.
[00:19:01] Howard: We used to play. Probably when we moved to Plymouth, I’d played at Plymouth, Carver, and we played Weymouth with north and Weymouth, south that’s right.
[00:19:10] Yeah.
[00:19:10] Kerry: Well, when I was there, , consolidated back to Weymouth high, so yeah, I graduated in 95. Yeah. But , the old colony league and. Yeah, good memories. So your first book is shut out a story of race and be baseball in Boston. Would you share with our listeners some of the history of abolitionism, ethnic conflict and deeply troubling race relations that sets the larger context for understanding Boston, the red Sox and race, as well as your own personal experiences, being a student baseball fan and sports writer in.
[00:19:49] Howard: Sure. Well, I think that one of the things about that book that has always appealed to me and it appealed to me at the time, which is why I wanted to do it was I think when you grow up black in [00:20:00] Boston and you’re a baseball. So much of your fandom is rooted in the history of the red Sox that the red Sox were the last team to integrate in 1959 with Pumpsie green.
[00:20:10] And not only that, but they could have been the first, they had an opportunity to the first chance to sign Jackie Robinson in 1945. And didn’t do it. So not only did they miss out on Jackie Robinson, but instead of becoming the first, the pioneer, they became the last, which was, Infamous for that franchise.
[00:20:27] And in between they had opportunities to sign numerous great players, including they had the first shot at Billy Mays in 1948. And so these stories played on top of each other and. As time went on. As you know, I grew up in the seventies and even then the red Sox did not really have a high number of black players.
[00:20:45] Race was always central. Of course, during that time you had busing as well happening with the, public schools of the racial imbalance act. And all of this to me had always been written through the lens of.[00:21:00] Everybody, but the black people who had to live it, it was about whether or not the folks in Southie felt aggrieved or whether or not judge Garrity.
[00:21:08] His ruling was fair or not fair, whether or not Tom Yaki was a racist. And all of these things didn’t take into account the humanity of the players, of the African-American players who had to live in Boston or the African-American kids who had to go to those schools and deal with what was taking place or the black face.
[00:21:27] Who had to make these decisions like my family, about whether or not they were going to put their kids in that environment. And so you grow up and you become a journalist and this is eating at you. And one of the reasons I became a journalist was the idea of watching a basketball game or watching a baseball game, and then reading the story in the Boston globe the next day or the Herald.
[00:21:48] And you say, well, that’s not what I remember. So I love the idea of being able to say what I thought happened last night. And. How I want it to represent these different pieces of history. And so that was [00:22:00] really Genesis of that book. And I think that one of the interesting things about that project was learning everything that was taking place in between, and that there, the red Sox, the red Sox have always had a prominent place in the history of race and major league baseball.
[00:22:17] But they really weren’t that different from any other team at that time. I mean, the Yankees were just as racist as the red Sox. So with the tigers in the Philadelphia Phillies, they weren’t really unique. What made them unique was even when the game began to integrate, even after Jackie Robinson and after Willie Mays and Henry Aaron and Frank Robinson and all those great players, even then the red Sox still, when everybody else was moving forward, the red Sox stadium.
[00:22:44] And they’d stayed behind as a franchise. The red Sox were sued twice by the Massachusetts commission against discrimination for not hiring any black employees. both I believe in 1951 and also in 1959. So this history was [00:23:00] deeply embedded in the franchise and it made rooting for the team. A very curious experience.
[00:23:07] Maybe
[00:23:07] Kerry: we can dig deeper into this. You’ve mentioned Jackie Robinson. Of course he’s among the most celebrated sports figures in American history. Could you discuss his infamous tryout with the Red Sox in April of 1945 and how he and other black players, including Reggie Smith, Jim Rice, Dennis oil can Boyd and
[00:23:27] Mookie Betts were treated in Boston. And why?
[00:23:31] Howard: I think that tryout is one of the great moments in baseball history, because it shows you that. It always frustrated me when people would refer to baseball integration as the color line as if it were this immutable space that somehow was like broken.
[00:23:46] And instead integration had been a conversation. It had been an issue that had been going on, obviously since the 18 hundreds, since black players were kicked out of the game in the late 18 hundreds. And so everyone has had known what was taking place. And everyone [00:24:00] knew that, integration or segregation in baseball was very much in line with the increasing segregation and Jim Crow that was taking place across the country.
[00:24:08] And so. You come out of World War two and world war two is the fight for freedom world war two is the referendum that freedom triumphed over fascism. And that this was , a Titanic struggle for the human spirit. And yet this is how black people are being treated in the United States. And so the entire idea, not just in.
[00:24:32] the military, because let’s not forget that during this Titanic struggle for freedom. The United States military is segregated. They’re not an integrated unit until 1948. And so how long could you keep this society separate? How long could this last while these other events are taking place around the world and while the United States is positioning itself as.
[00:24:55] the Victor, as the difference maker in terms of the direction of [00:25:00] world history. And one of the areas where you saw this meritocracy needing to be corrected was in sports. Something as simple as sports as ridiculous as a baseball game. And you could see why this was so important because if these players could play together on the same thing, If they could travel together, if they could shower together, if they could eat together, if they could room together, then why can’t they go to school together?
[00:25:29] Why can’t they live in the same neighborhood? , so on the one hand, sports may seem ephemeral, but on the other hand, it’s extremely important because if these things can take place on a daily basis, then why can’t they take place in a daily basis in our everyday lives? So the red cell. We’re the first team to have an opportunity that integration simply because of one person has a door, much.
[00:25:47] Nick, a Boston city counselor from west Roxbury who had the temerity to demand that the red Sox lead in terms of living up to Boston’s history as one of the great integrated cities in the 17 [00:26:00] hundreds, as the place where you did have integrated schools early. to live up to Boston’s revolutionary war history, even though Boston was a loyalist city, but so be it.
[00:26:10] And, um, and the red Sox brought in three players, Marvin Williams, Jackie Robinson, and Sam Jethro on April 1945. And they hit a few balls and they wore red Sox uniform. So there’s, I wish there had been a photo of it where Jackie Robinson actually was wearing a Boston red Sox. And they hit a few balls and then they said, thank you very much.
[00:26:33] And none of the players ever heard from the red Sox again, and Jackie Robinson took that bitterness to his grave. Sam Jethro, as it turned out, ended up integrating in Boston. Anyway, five years later. With the Boston Braves and ended up winning rookie of the year. So he was the first. So he was in that trout in 1945.
[00:26:50] I ended up playing in Boston with the Braves before they moved to Milwaukee. And then of course now they play in Atlanta. So the deep history of race and [00:27:00] integration runs right through Boston, whether we want it to, or not, especially when you look at Boston’s history of abolition and part of that, that legend of Boston, part of that legacy of Boston, , people wanted to hold onto.
[00:27:12] And that, first 18, 17th, 18th century history, they wanted that to translate into the 20th century then of course it really didn’t. And so it’s interesting when you’re a longtime Bostonian, you know, the difference between what we grew up reading in the textbooks, and then what the history.
[00:27:32] Kerry: Really interesting.
[00:27:33] You know, we’ve been talking a lot about the red Sox, but let’s shift gears to the Celtics. One of the greatest athletes in Boston sports is the south X basketball legend bill Russell. Could you talk a little bit about his experiences playing in Boston, the late 1950s and sixties, and why even today there, you know, we have this modest statue downtown, but there seems to be little dedicated to bill Russell’s historic achievements and his.
[00:27:59] Yeah. [00:28:00] Yeah. Well,
[00:28:01] Howard: because this is the thing. , on the one hand, you have to think about what was taking place during this time. So on the one hand, in the 1940s, the 1945, you have the red Sox tryout. The red Sox don’t integrate the red Sox. Don’t integrate until 1959. The Braves integrate in 1950, but they move after the 1952 season to Milwaukee, the Celtics have read our back as their coach in the late fifties, they bring in bill Russell, they draft the trade for bill Russell in the 1956.
[00:28:28] And the Celtics become a dynasty and the Celtics not only become a dynasty, but the Celtics become leaders. If you contrast the red Sox and the Celtics, the red Sox have this miserable racial history and the Celtics. On the other hand, when eight straight championships, bill Russell wins 11 championships in 13 years, the Celtics break , the unspoken taboo in the NBA of always having a majority number of white players on the court.
[00:28:52] You always had to have. Three to two at the very least, or at the very, yeah, at the very moment, the very most, and that our back has five black [00:29:00] players on the court at the same time. So he breaks that unspoken rule red, our bag breaks the rule of having, at least the first black coach, the hires bill Russell in 1966 to be the first black head coach of the major sports.
[00:29:11] So on the one hand, you’ve got this terrible racial history. On the red Sox side and then across town over at north station, you’ve got this pioneering spirit with one major problem. Most fans didn’t want to watch black players and they didn’t really love basketball, basketball.
[00:29:27] Wasn’t a big sport at the time. And bill Russell had a miserable time. Living in Boston had a very, very difficult, difficult experience in Boston, in terms of how he navigated the city. He used to refer to it as a flea market of racism. And so, and I’m very, very proud guy. And so he was not going to be conciliatory toward the city.
[00:29:47] The city had brought. He won his championships and he had his relationships and then he left. And so that negotiation, that relationship had has been 60 years of attempted [00:30:00] reconciliations and silence in a lot of ways. I think things have obviously calmed down now, but for most of the time you looked at somebody, bill Russell was the greatest champion that this country has ever produced in terms of championing.
[00:30:14] ’cause before he came to the Celtics. He’d won back-to-back championships in college and an Olympic gold medal in 1956 in Melbourne. So this great champion was never really celebrated in Boston. And it’s only been in the last 20, 25 years where you could even see a little bit of a.
[00:30:31] GR: And the wonderful books that you’ve published. You’ve not only focused on baseball and basketball in Boston, your hometown, but you’ve also talked about sports, , across the area, including, what we’re looking at in terms of. A school and, NCA sports. So when I think about sports today from youth to high school, to college, even to the pros, it’s really a multi-billion dollar business and has got a wide appeal amongst pretty energetic fan base.
[00:30:59] The media [00:31:00] will cover it sports. The high school sports, , find its way into our popular culture. Could you talk about the current state of the NCAA and professional sports regarding which leagues are doing a better job than the other and addressing larger racial disparities or even concern it’s about, what does it look like in our national debate?
[00:31:19] Howard: Well, I think that if you go and look at the history of it, I think that sports is always going to be important. And at some point it became America’s religion. If you go back to the 18 hundreds, nobody cared about, I mean, baseball was a sport, but it didn’t matter. I mean, baseball and cycling and walking these in, horse racing later on would become these sports.
[00:31:41] But when you start looking at it in terms of how to become American, you have really three waves. And I think the first wave is. The immigration era where you have this great exit is coming from Europe during the industrial revolution of Italians and Jews and poles and Germans. And how did those kids become American?[00:32:00]
[00:32:00] Their parents didn’t speak English, but they became Americanized by playing sports, by playing baseball in the street and boxing. And in the rest of it, this was the pathway Americanizing for those first generations of immigrants. And the second way. Is the integration error. Once again, when you think about the large American institutions, the institution of sports integrated before all of them sports integrated before most schools sports innovated before the military sports integrated before television sports integrated, before journalism integrated before all of it.
[00:32:31] And so, and especially when you’re looking at it from an inter-collegiate, , perspective, The predominantly white institutions, they weren’t looking at the HBC use for their doctors and their scientists and their lawyers. They wanted their ballplayers. So still at the, root of it all was the, use and utility of the black physical body.
[00:32:51] And that’s really the area where you started to seize the colleges integrate. And then of course you get to this third era, [00:33:00] which is the economic. And now that starting in the mid seventies, when you start to get free agency and baseball, and then obviously as the money gets bigger and all of the sports, the money also gets bigger in college sports.
[00:33:10] And as the money gets bigger and bigger. You see a change in the priority. And one of the arguments had always been in the integration of the athlete was that this was going to be a pathway for these black students, student athletes. They like to call them to have a broader experience, to be exposed to more and to get an education.
[00:33:31] And that there was a trade taking place. You were a physical prowess for the opportunity to be. a college campus. And now you look at it today and we know that a lot of these players aren’t being educated at all. They’re there to make money for their universities. And so that mission in so many ways has been lost.
[00:33:53] And you think about this from the standpoint now where the debate is, whether or not we [00:34:00] should just pay the players. and it’s a good argument to have considering that. the NCAA that college football and college basketball are so incredibly lucrative. And so you’re starting to see some of this change, but while it’s changing, you also have to say whatever happened to educating these students, whatever happened to educating these players.
[00:34:16] And so have we simply given up on that piece of it, and now we’re just going to admit that the players are there to earn they’re there to work, but they’re not, they’re totally.
[00:34:28] GR: good point. You mentioned student athletes and. I think of someone like Arthur Ashe, you played at UCLA tiger woods played at Stanford. the Williams sisters, in Compton playing sports, but mother and father making sure they take their, , academics pretty seriously. They’ve all been pioneering players, in a respective sport.
[00:34:49] And we also think about what that means in terms of. What’s sometimes in our communities call a bear in the cross for the race. Would you share your views about how these athletes were [00:35:00] treated, lessons learned and maybe even how they managed or mismanaged their status as celebrities in American
[00:35:07] Howard: culture?
[00:35:08] Well, I think that what you have. When it comes to black athletes and you see it. I talked about a lot of this in my 2018 book. The heritage, this responsibility that the black athlete has that they’re not supposed to have. And that’s the goal to me at least, is that one day they won’t have it, that black people are the only people in this country who relies so heavily on people who hit a ball with a stick or who put a ball through a hoop or who can run really fast.
[00:35:36] And. This all goes back to this deal that had been made during the 20th century about the ones who made it. The athlete is the one who made it and the athlete is the one who made it even more so than the entertainers. And the difference between. Prince and Michael Jackson’s and Diana Ross’s and beyoncé’s and count bases of the world is that you didn’t need a movement for them to [00:36:00] perform.
[00:36:00] They could always perform for white people. Go back to the cotton club, go back to the, go back. Even earlier into the 18 hundreds, black people have always performed for white people, but sports, you needed a movement sports. You actually had to have a physical movement that led into the civil rights ever even Martin Luther king used to say, you know, that Jackie Robinson was the beginning of the civil rights movement.
[00:36:20] And so because of that, there’s this responsibility that the black athlete has had to bear that cross. And I always refer to the black athlete. They are the most visible, the most successful and the most influential black employees this country’s ever produced. That is not always a compliment, but it is true.
[00:36:38] because this country has spent so much time using sports as the antidote to racism that. Places is it fair? But if my 40 time is faster than yours, if I score more runs than you, if I score more points than you, I get to win, then, that is supposed to be pure. Even though we know in sports, that’s not the case either, [00:37:00] but that has been the argument that sports could provide for us this pathway to what color blind list.
[00:37:05] It really doesn’t exist. But that’s why it’s so important. And that’s why we spend so much time looking at the Serena Williams is of the world and looking at the LeBron James of the world and hoping that they use their platform as we hear so often now the Colin Kaepernick’s that they are the ones who provide for us a level of visibility that really isn’t fair to them, but it is what it has been.
[00:37:30] This is what has been created. And to me, goal really shouldn’t be imploring the black athletes to constantly, you know, speak for black America. But that one day they can just play ball and let’s leave it to other people who are in better positions to lead us
[00:37:49] GR: a great point. In fact, that made me think of a question. When you talked about the black athlete, earlier. Let’s just go to school and just play sports. You’re not truly a scholar athlete. [00:38:00] And we overlooked the fact that our community has got a lot of examples of Scott, our athletes. I mean, I think of someone like, Chris Howard, who is a president of Robert Morris college.
[00:38:10] He went to the air force academy road scholar, doctorate from Oxford. And now he’s a college president, but he was a Campbell award winner when he was in college. And even if you go. Back in time, as you talk about history, you made me think about, uh, Dr. Roscoe brown, who is president of community college in New York, Tuskegee airmen.
[00:38:28] But you know what Biff for Jim brown, he was actually the one who was a major lacrosse player and later became a scholar in his own. Right? How do we close that gap? Or maybe open up the door to opportunity to talk about true scholar athletes, both men.
[00:38:45] Howard: Well, I think it’s a priority. It’s not just a black party.
[00:38:47] It’s a priority period. And what are your priorities? What are your values? What do you respect? And I think that we are completely as a country enamored [00:39:00] with. Lottery, this sort of capitalist lottery that one day you can be famous. I mean, that is not a, that is not even a racial designation. That’s what we all do.
[00:39:08] Everyone wants to play this lottery and, but the stakes are higher when you have less and black people as, uh, as a people have. So this magic bullet, the one who made it is the narrative that we all gravitate toward. And it’s very tiring. It’s very tiring to people in the black community who were like, Hey, this is not all there is.
[00:39:27] And think about what we’re doing to the people who don’t make it. And this whole idea of this narrative being dead or in jail. Well, if I weren’t for sports, I’d be dead or in jail. Well, if that is the case after all of these decades, That being able to bounce a ball is still your best chance. Then we failed.
[00:39:47] We failed miserably and yet that is still the prevailing narrative. And that’s why we pay so much attention to sports, not just because we’re entertained. And it’s amazing to watch Patrick my [00:40:00] homes or to watch Lamar Jackson play football. It’s because this is still the way outside. And it’s very tired and it shows you just how much institutional political failure,
[00:40:16] GR: Well, thanks to the work that you do, both in book, form essays, op-eds but also, , in movies, you’re starting to at least get us thinking us across the board on what it means to be American, what it means to be great, what it means to be a genius, both on the court and off the court, but also realizing that if we can’t get some of this right.
[00:40:38] Outside of sports, then we’re putting so much on the athletes to do, which is unfair to them. But thank you for your, intellectual ism, your humor, your wits, and your common sense approach to issues that are often tough for people to talk about. Thank you for the work you’re doing and,
[00:40:53] Howard: keep it up.
[00:40:54] No, it’s my pleasure. Thank you.[00:41:00]
[00:41:27] Kerry: So the tweet of the week, Gerard is a tweet by education week on February 21st. And I don’t know if you’re into. At all, but my kids are definitely into this new word game. , it’s daily activity and exercise that they have a lot of fun with. And so education, we tweeted out video saying you can pick up on patterns of words, , that matched together to make certain words and use more skills than you think.
[00:41:57] You do when you first start, this was a, for a [00:42:00] fourth grade teacher said that these teachers are using Wordle to teach phonics in their classrooms. So, just a really exciting, creative way of using what is right now, kind of a cultural trend to, , make learning better in the classroom.
[00:42:14] GR: Well, thank you for that tweet of the week.
[00:42:16] And for educating me, I will now take a. And next week’s guest is Linda Chavez, who is a senior fellow at the national immigration forum and the author of, out of the Barrio toward a new politics of Hispanic assimilation. Carrie, again, thank you so much for joining me as a co-host this week really enjoyed what you had to share from your story, but also the advice.
[00:42:40] That you share with all of us about not only entrepreneurship, but about parental choice, but just really to keep us thinking about what I believe is one of the most important social movements in the last quarter century. So glad you were
[00:42:52] Kerry: here with me. Always a pleasure, Gerard. Thanks again. Take
[00:42:55] GR: care, everyone.[00:43:00]
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Host Joe Selvaggi talks with Pioneer Institute’s Senior Healthcare Policy Fellow Josh Archambault about the shortage of doctors in the U.S. and the potential for licensing reform to attract medical expertise from around the world to reduce future healthcare shortages and provide incentives for immigrating professionals to work in underserved communities. Read more in Forbes.
Guest:
Josh Archambault is President and Founder of Presidents Lane Consulting. He is a Senior Fellow at both Pioneer Institute and the Cicero Institute. His work experience has ranged from work as a Senior Legislative Aide to a governor, Legislative Director for a state senator, to years working for think tanks operating in thirty-five states, and in D.C. He is a regular contributor to the influential Forbes.com blog, The Apothecary. Josh holds a master’s in public policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and a B.A. in political studies and economics from Gordon College.
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Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
Joe Selvaggi:
This is Hubwonk. I’m Joe Selvaggi.
Joe Selvaggi:
Welcome to Hubwonk, a podcast of Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston. Americans are facing a doctor shortage. This complex problem is driven in part by the increased medical demands of an aging baby boom generation, as well as the impending retirement of doctors who are themselves in the boomer demographic. While the supply of new doctors is constrained by medical school and residency program capacity, our owner’s licensing process also serves to limit the number of foreign trained doctors, immigrating to ease the supply. Indeed, even the most accomplished medical expert in the world would likely need to repeat his or her residency were they to immigrate to the United States, given the critical and growing shortage of physicians are the reforms to our licensing process that could attract qualified doctors from around the world to help serve the needs of an aging us population. My guest today is Pioneer Institute’s senior healthcare fellow, Josh Archambault. Mr. Archambault’s recent Forbes article entitled “Olympians trust international doctors. Can they help reduce the US physician shortage?” shines a light on the barriers facing foreign trained doctors who want to practice in the United States, but who must face the requirement to repeat residency? His speech suggests that common sense reforms to our poorly designed licensing process could offer the us healthcare system much needed expertise and even provide tools for medically underserved communities to attract much needed doctors. When I return, I’ll be joined by Pioneer institute’s Josh Archambault.
Joe Selvaggi:
Okay. We’re back. I’m Joe Selvaggi. This is Hubwonk. I’m now joined by Pioneer Institute’s senior healthcare fellow, Josh Archambault. Welcome back to the show. Josh
Josh Archambault:
Joe, thanks so much for having me back again.
Joe Selvaggi:
Good. Well, Josh it’s good to have you back. I was intrigued by some of the issues you brought up. You had a, a wonderful article in Forbes just this past week. I believe maybe a week and a half ago. And it was entitled Olympians trust international doctors. Can they help reduce the us physician shortage? I’ll, I’ll paraphrase it and say it brought up an interesting idea that with the Olympics that the ceremonies are finishing up this week our athletes can compete all over the world. They have access to some of the best doctors all over the world, but doctors can’t compete all over the world. They can’t just pick up and, and go where they like. And you wove that into an idea that couldn’t, we do more to help bring these doctors here if they like and perhaps address an impending shortage of doctors. So let’s unpack your argument of the article piece by piece. Let’s talk about, I think it was some of the Olympic athletes, the winter Olympic athletes couldn’t have access to the doctors that they had wanted say more about where, where those Olympic patients are right now.
Josh Archambault:
Yeah. So my co-author Jonathan and I were like many Americans watching the Olympics off and on over the last few weeks. And one of the stories that we were noticing in some of the media coverage repeatedly was just a remarkable amount of surgeries that some of these athletes have gone through to beat, you know, especially those that are in their thirties or so, and, you know, seven knee surgeries. And then I think it speaks couple things. One, one, just the remarkable ability of modern medicine to be able to get athletes who careers would’ve been completely ruined by one of these injuries in the past, and would not have competed again to be back at the top of their game and back at multiple Olympics because of these surgeries. And one of the things that we noticed was many of them were seeking out some specialists in Europe or other parts of the world that some of these top medical professionals, and it dawned on us that actually, while Americans can go and see these, the Olympians can afford or sponsor to go and see these per providers elsewhere, they actually couldn’t provide that same label of service in America.
Josh Archambault:
And there’s a variety of reasons for that. But at the crux of it is if you went, if you’re an internationally trained physician and you want to come to the United States to practice, then you have to repeat your residency. You have to go back to what it would’ve been just after you graduated medical school. And in many cases we’ve heard repeatedly, they’re just not willing to do that for a variety of reasons. And so as we look ahead and look at the physician shortage, this raised a, a barrier and an issue, and there’s a way out of this. There are some states moving forward on it, which we can talk about, but it’s just one of those things that I don’t think most, most average patients really think about, who they can actually see is dictated by whether in where the person was trained.
Joe Selvaggi:
So you, you’re saying if you are the top doctor in the world on a particular surgery and you want to immigrate to the United States along with the attending immigration limitations, perhaps but let’s those aside for a moment you would have to go back to, despite the fact you may have been in the industry 25 years, you’d have to go back and redo your residency as if you had just graduated medical school along with your fellow 25 year olds. And, and do what is, you know, I think it’s been called residency because you essentially reside at the hospital. It’s a pretty intensive low pay retraining for someone who really is a more senior person. So you’re saying all of those doctors would have to start. I won’t say it’s square one, but let’s say not not where they left off in their, in their native country.
Josh Archambault:
That’s right. And so if we think about, you know, America aspiring to be a place of entrepreneurs and innovation, you know, I anecdotally have heard of stories of top of their field surgeons or others living in the EA for example, which they pioneer a certain kind of procedure, but I can’t come, can’t come to Boston, can’t come to New York kind, come to LA, can’t come to Kansas city, can’t come to a rural community to perform that surgery because they would have to go through that. And so I think, you know, there’s many layers to this issue that you mentioned immigration, but I think it comes down to, at the end of the day, is America wanting to be a welcoming land to this innovation, to experts in the medical field. You know, we, we look forward at the demographics in this country, especially for physicians, about 40% of physicians are due to retire by 2030.
Josh Archambault:
And so we’re just outta pure necessity. This is an issue that we need to talk about how many people are going to medical school, how many residency slots are, how, how do we fund those residency slots? Do we have enough providers in rural communities? Do we have enough of them in, under, in underserved urban communities, which is a, a major issue, but getting at just the cutting edge technology and, and medical services that don’t do emerge, do we want those entrepreneurs to feel incentivized and have a clear pathway to be able to come to the United States and practice, or even just come and teach practice here for a couple years to teach some of our medical doctors or surgeons or others to provide that. And right now there is a barrier in the way and states can do it. And what was very interesting about this as we’ve dug into this issue, and we’re not alone, Jeff Dr.
Josh Archambault:
Jeffer, who is the former Dean of Harvard medical school has dug into this as well. Is that in a lot of conversations there doesn’t actually seem to be a reason why that this requirement is on the books. It primarily is just what we’ve always done it this way. And so that really raises questions about, well, that, that doesn’t, if there’s not an actual reason for why this barriers in place, these people have already done residencies in their home country. So why would we require them to repeat it? And it’s a relatively simple change policy change, but of course the devils and the details of what, what countries are, are we allowing individuals to come? Where do we think medical programs are quote unquote equivalent going forward. But beyond those sorts of details, the actual simple concept just let’s make sure that they, they’re not taking a huge hit financially and having to live at the hospital doing 60, 70, 80 hour weeks, when really these are the folks that have 25, 30 years experience, and we wanna make sure that they have that clear pathway here.
Joe Selvaggi:
Sure. I think you, you point out a bunch of very good points in, in your remarks. I will say I don’t wanna sound like a cynic, but one of the reasons I think no one’s advocating for foreign doctors causes is they don’t vote. So they’re not here to advocate on their own behalf, but you point out to, if there’s no reason to change this, in other words, we’ve always done it this way. Why, you know, there’s no impetus to, to change your paper, your, your piece also points to the fact that there’s a projected shortage. You estimate of a, a, a shortage of physicians of 120,000 physicians by 2030. You made some reference to in your last remark to the demographics. We all know about the baby boomers retiring rate of, I think it’s a, the silver tsunami as they call it a rate of 10,000 people every day are retiring. Some of those retirees are, are doctors. So they’re going, you know, those baby boomer doctors are also retiring and will also need doctors themselves. You mentioned 40% of American physicians will be, will be retiring in that time. So why why doesn’t this make more sense? Why in a sense, looking at these inevitable demographics, why wouldn’t this be enough to really stimulate a a force for change?
Josh Archambault:
Well, I, I think we’re optimistic there, there are some states debating this as we speak Arizona, Missouri, Wisconsin, there’s bills filed there, moving on this exact issue. And I think it’s only going to grow, but let let’s peel back the onion a little bit. I think there’s a couple confounding issues that are making this worse, not only the demographics, but, you know, if you step back and say, do, do we have enough doctors or medical students coming through the pipeline to replace those that are gonna retire the answers? No we simply don’t. I, and so there is a debate to be had, and we’ve had this in Massachusetts over the years of do we have enough medical schools? Do we have enough entities training, the next generation of physicians and projections that I’ve seen from multiple organizations to simple answers? No, we do not have enough.
Josh Archambault:
We do not have enough individuals who are going into medicine able to replace this, but then the secondary issue becomes, do we actually have enough residency slots? Because that is in all 50 states for physicians and a requirement to be licensed, they have to go through the residency slot. Third answer is no, we don’t have enough residency slots. And so while we’re not graduating enough for those that we are graduating, there are still thousands of them every single year year that don’t get matched in a residency slot. Well, if you don’t get a residency slot, then you’re not able to get licensed in practice. So we’re losing them, we’re pay. They are. And we are investing all of this money to train them. And yet we do not have enough residency slots for them to go to a lot of those individuals. If they don’t get matched, maybe the second time around the second year, they will leave medicine.
Josh Archambault:
They won’t take any job in the field and they’ll go do something else. And what a loss for us as a country, what a loss for patients when access is such such an issue, then you layer onto that, that you, there is a pathway for internationally trained physicians. Once they come outta school to come, if they haven’t done a residency slot at home, they’re gonna have to apply for one of these residency slot where we do not have enough to begin with and they’re in competition. So then we end up at the, that kinda last stop of this discussion, which is what the piece is about, which is for an individual who’s already done. Let’s just say in the UK or in Canada has already completed the residency. We’re now putting them into the pool to compete for not enough slots. And it really is head scratching.
Josh Archambault:
When you start think about the way that the system has been set up. And I think that’s the crux of so many issues that we have in healthcare. There was not an original design to end up where we are now. It just evolved into what it is. And so we at times need to stop and pause and think about, okay, we’re probably not going to start from scratch in many instances here, but we can adjust and make sure that there are pathways that are common sense that are meet the needs of patient, meet the needs of physicians. And this is one of them to say that if an individual has actually already done a residency, we’re not gonna throw them into this quagmire that we have already of not having enough slots and there’s are reforms needed in Medicare. That has to do with medic with residency slots, there’s reforms needed for medical schools. Like those are whole other conversations that need to be had in this country. But at minimum, we can start with the low hanging fruit. I think you’re going to see a growing effort and focus on this because just outta pure necessity of, we need to find more sources of highly qualified providers to be able to come in to.
Joe Selvaggi:
So me to unpack what you’ve just described, you say, okay, look, we need more doctors we’ve established that, right. Particularly going forward. So we have kids going into undergrad at bio majors, premeds. We got plenty of those going in. Then they go into medical school, I suppose. They’re, you know, that funnel gets a little narrower at that point. Then they leave medical school and they need to enter one of these precious residency is, and I think your paper mentions something like 2200 medical students don’t find a, a, a program. So this seems like the limiting constraint here in the, in the process. So some who don’t go into D don’t get their residency go become, I don’t know what, what they become perhaps. I don’t know. But they they don’t become doctor. And so ultimately at the end of the pipeline, we have American born doctors.
Joe Selvaggi:
What you’re saying is if we could do some meaningful, intelligent reform on allowing international doctors to move here, practice here, and in a sense avoid needing to go back to your residency. Not only does it provide a, a poll and other words, they, they don’t have to forego income and time and become a resident again. So we have that pull, but also they’re not, they’re not crowding out American born medical students who also are competing for those residencies. In other words, it’s, it’s, win-win the doctors who are already in the pipeline, the, it, they’re not competing with these international doctors. And those of us who need here, who don’t wanna wait a long time in a waiting room have more doctors to choose from. Am I summarizing your, your points there?
Josh Archambault:
Yeah, it’s absolutely true. And, and just to be very clear, I mean, they could be American born, or they could be international students who come to American medical
Joe Selvaggi:
School. Yes. I, I didn’t mean to mean, I’m not sure, sure. I’d be native. I just, yeah,
Josh Archambault:
No, absolutely. And so it’s just, you know, medical graduates of medical institutions and, and, and what’s interesting is you have seen a number of in the Caribbean in particular, there are a couple institutions who are actually drawing quite a fewer down to the Caribbean to be trained who have very good relationships with trying to place in residency slots when they, those Americans are ready to come back to the United States. And so you’re seeing these individuals and to what, what what’s interesting is like, there are more people who want to go to med school than are able to go. So there’s actually the filtering. There’s been lots of questions about whether the narrowing is actually a beneficial thing. Are, are those not getting into medical school actually less qualified? And I’ve seen research saying, no, these are individuals that if there were slots, they would be just as good medical providers, if there were just more slots in medical school to begin with.
Josh Archambault:
So yeah, there’s certainly an issue there. I, I think the other thing that we see emerge in this debate is, well, where are these individuals going to go? Are they going to settle in urban areas or they’re going to settle in rural areas. And some of the states that are debating this reform do say that we, you can, we’re going to, you can skip the residency slot. If you go into one of the critical access that areas and you need to live there. And anecdotally what’s very interesting is on the loan repayment side, in rural American, in particular, where this is probably the most acute in some communities there’s been loan repayment programs trying to get medical students to come out, to serve well, in essence, a lot of them will come get their loan forgiven and then move somewhere else. But for a lot of these internationally trained physicians, they’ll come, they’ll bring their families, they’ll settle in the community and they’ll become deeply part of that community.
Josh Archambault:
And so that’s why you, we’re seeing a lot of rural hospitals and others excited about this sort of reform to say, Hey, we’re not just looking for somebody to come and serve for two to three years, five years, but we want somebody to come here and live here 20 or 30 years. And so while this is and I don’t wanna oversell it, this is not a silver bullet reform to the, the physician shortage issue, but it is certainly a tool in the toolbox. It seems to be very common sense, the benefits, not only the physician in their family, the hospital patients in particular. And I just think we need to make sure that we pause and how policy makers be aware of this, that with a relatively easy change, they can create this pathway for these physicians to come if they would like to.
Joe Selvaggi:
So you’re saying these programs now work deliberately to encourage or entice doctors away from, let’s say urban areas like a Boston towards more rural areas, let’s say Western part of our own state, right. Here in Massachusetts it’s probably under doctored and I would hazard guess at Boston has more doctors per square mile than any place on earth. So so you’re saying what rural communities typically do is perhaps have some loan forgiveness program to, to encourage a doctor out. What a international program I do is go directly to the international doctrine and say, if you move here you know, we, we will be supportive. And what you’re saying that even more so than the loan repayment is a stickier relationship. The international doctor who comes over and moves his family here is more likely to stay in that rural community than the counterpart from a, a us medical school, once his loans repaid, he may pack up and go back to Boston.
Josh Archambault:
Yeah. That, that, and I, haven’t seen a lots of research done on that. That’s more anecdotal from talking to people who are you know, trying to attract providers. And I, I think it doesn’t just apply to physician. I think it applies to nurse practitioners and nurses and others because you know, the shortage of medical high quality medical providers is extremely acute at this moment. Not just because of COVID, but because of a lot more mobility, I mean, it, some future episode, Joe, we can talk about the nurse shortage issue that is out there and the amount of hospitals and others that are using traveling nurses, individuals who only come in for three months or six months, and then move on. I mean, having a culture of care at the highest quality when you have your staff turning over every three to six months of individuals moving, not to say that these are not good providers, but just difficult when you’re having new personalities come in, having to, to learn new systems.
Josh Archambault:
So if you’re able to get providers, whether it’s a physician, not way down to a nurse, who’s there and is living in the community and not going to move on in three to six months, that is by far the preference going forward. And we’re having an unprecedented amount of disruption happen in our, a lot of medical settings, both urban and rural. And so we have to look at some of these alternative ways to make sure that individuals that wanna come and if even 50% of them settle down in their community and become really valuable parts of that community, that’s a huge win. And, you know, I think the last thing I would just say here, Joe, about the numbers of what we’re talking about is this has been a little bit of a chicken and an egg debate of trying to understand will a lot more physicians come.
Josh Archambault:
If they know that they have to go through the residency slots there is a visa program that allows individuals to come currently right now and not all of those visa slots are taken every year. And the speculation for years has been beats because of this barrier. And so I think interestingly, if a few states pass this, we’re gonna find out in the next five years or so, whether that is in fact, the primary area for these trained physicians to come, or whether it’s other issues they don’t know about the opportunity. They’re not being recruited. Maybe it’s the systems are just different between some of these countries, but when you’re talking about Israel, Australia, the UK, Canada, Ireland, but these systems are close enough. In many people, we have seen individuals come into the country out of these countries and do a fellowship, be here for 10 years and maybe go back home due to family reasons. It, it is not that big of a stretch to see that you would see more flow back and forth of physicians coming and actually becoming and settling down.
Joe Selvaggi:
Well, I like to say often when we’re talking about topics here on hub long, I say our audience are not just they’re not into just merely our ideas or think tank, but we’re also a do tank. You, as you say, there’s many layers to this question but medical staff stability. But to in the wake of the disruption of COVID is something that benefits all of us. Of course, the doctors and the nurses wanna be stable. The patients themselves wanna see the same familiar face when they are, when they’re sick. What can listeners and I, I really wanna address more of the state level. Of course immigration can be more of a national issue, but let’s address what we could do as a state. If policy makers are listening to this show and this strikes a chord with them, what, what could we do?
Josh Archambault:
Yeah, I think there’s probably two pathways here. You know, first is the legislature of the general court, certainly could pass a law model of one of the other bills that have been filed around the country that creates an explicit pathway. And those bills typically have done a few things. The one, the first one is they’ve actually named a number of countries. And to say, we are gonna have some sort of reciprocity here that if you have attended a medical school, and there is entities international entities who certify these schools. And so if you attend one of these schools in one of these countries that are recognized, then if you would like to come and practice in the United States, you still need to meet every other requirement that the board of licensure has, but you do not need to repeat your, the residency as we’ve been speaking about that at least brings clarity that allows medical institutions, hospitals, to know that they can go out and recruit at these international program and say, or other facilities and say, you know, we really would like to have you come and practice at our hospital because of the high quality work that you are doing and let people know here’s the process to do that.
Josh Archambault:
You no longer have this multi-year barrier in place. So it’s that simple. I do think that in many cases, including Massachusetts, the boards themselves could be a lot more explicit. I think this is an education gap, more than anything. It’s just to say, this is something that you can do to set up a process in which individuals to say, here are the criteria that we are looking for. You need to be in good standing back home. You need to have gone to one of these schools. You need to have not had major liability issues in the last few you years going forward, we need to see your records. We need to see how you did in school. It, you completed school, all of those kind of basic things that we would want to double check before somebody comes, but it’s often the gray area here that leads to, I think, hesitation for people going forward so that states could very easily pass a law. Or I think the boards could really clearly articulate out to say, this is the pathway that we’re going to have going forward, and we’re gonna welcome open the door to these individuals that wanna come practice.
Joe Selvaggi:
But a wonderfully interesting experiment will be if we can get this all going. I think to myself as a, as a city guy myself we see a lot of immigrants all the time. Usually the urban center is where immigrants start. Certainly my grandparents, that’s how they went. I can imagine seeding our rural communities with very well educated people from other places. It may, may change our our culture, right? We, the people pillars are our community are our, our medical professionals coming from elsewhere. May, may change our sort of a notion of what people from other places look like are like it may, I think have a very beneficial effect on just our, our our view of the world. If, if the person curing your kid or your mom is from somewhere else it may have, have a, take a different look on, on the rest of the world. I’m, I’m just offering that as an aside, as a, as a, a thoughtful idea. This has been very informative. Is there anybody taking lead up on our state house in our state house on beacon hill, someone a Crusader for, for the cause of international medical doctors. I met asking you this, not knowing if you do have an answer, I I’ll just throw that out there
Josh Archambault:
To date. There is not I think that this is an open opportunity for the conversation to start in Massachusetts.
Joe Selvaggi:
Oh, good. All right, we’ll leave it there then, then thank you very much, Josh. That it was a great great article in, in Forbes. Congratulations on getting it in there and thanks for helping make this, you know, this somewhat our Keene piece of information more familiar to our listeners. I, I think this could not gonna solve the problem, but we, we are moving towards finding a solution. So thank you very much. Thank you.
Joe Selvaggi:
This has been another episode of Hubwonk, a podcast of Pioneer Institute. If you enjoyed today’s episode, there are several ways to support the show. It would be easier for you and better for us. If you subscribe to Hubwonk on your iTunes podcast, catcher, if you’d like to help make it easier for others to find Hubwonk, it would be great if you offer a five-star rating or a favorable review, we’re always grateful. If you share Hubwonk with friends, if you have ideas or suggestions or comments for me about our episodes, you’re welcome to email me at Hubwonk@pioneerinstitute.org. Please join me next week for a new episode of Hubwonk.
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This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Dinesh Wadhwani, founder and CEO of ThinkLite, LLC in Natick, Massachusetts, and immigrant from Ghana. His journey began when his grandfather was forced to flee India, and built a business in Ghana that paved the way for the generations to come. When Dinesh moved to the United States in 2008 as a student at Babson College, he was determined to build a life and a business here in the U.S. While he was studying entrepreneurship, he became one: in just a few short years, his technology-based life science solutions business expanded across the globe and evolved into a life-saving enterprise, purifying the air in hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic, as you’ll learn in this week’s JobMakers.
Guest:
Dinesh Wadhwani, Founder and CEO of ThinkLite, is an industry expert and serial entrepreneur in the electronics and optics industries. ThinkLite is currently present in 14 countries worldwide, owns several patents, and works with Fortune 500 companies, townships and enterprises across the globe. Dinesh works with his close-knit team of engineers to create “high value add” lighting solutions that solve larger problems beyond efficiency. Examples include pharmaceuticals, agriculture, poultry, data centers, general health and most recently, a technology solution that is able to track the levels of pathogens in the air in indoor public areas and facilities, including COVID-19, amongst other viruses; so that they can be addressed, and managed effectively to maximize safety in a facility. Dinesh has been a nominee for The Immigrant Learning Center’s Immigrant Entrepreneur Awards. He was recognized by Inc. Magazine’s 2015 top under 30 Entrepreneur of the Year; a “Top 50 Power Influencer in Massachusetts, 2018” by Boston Business Journal, and has been recognized by the White House as being part of the top young entrepreneurs in the country, creating high impact and employment in the USA.
Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
Denzil Mohammed:
I’m Denzil Mohammed, and this is Jobmakers,
Denzil Mohammed:
Migration stories. Aren’t always simple. Families might have moved to different countries in different generations for different reasons. However, it is that entrepreneurial spirit of leaving everything behind taking a risk and working for better in a new land that not only keeps them going, but drives innovation and resourcefulness for Dinesh Wadhwani, founder and CEO of ThinkLite LLC in Natick, Massachusetts, immigrant from Ghana, that journey began with his grandfather who was forced to flee India for another British colony. And despite having to work all alone from nothing, he was able to build a business in Ghana and pave the way for the generations to come. When Danes moved to the United States in 2008, as a student at Babson College, the mandate from his father was clear, build a life and a business in the US and not returning to Ghana. And that’s just what Dinesh did. Even while he was studying entrepreneurship. He became an entrepreneur in just a few short years. His technology-based life science solutions business expanded across the globe and evolved into a life saving enterprise, purifying the air in hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic. As you’;; learn in this week’s Jobmakers.
Denzil Mohammed:
Dinesh Wadhwani, founding CEO of ThinkLite, welcome to Jobmakers. How are you?
Dinesh Wadhwani:
I’m very well. Thank you, Danzil. Thank you for having me here today. I appreciate it.
Denzil Mohammed:
So give us a 30-second pitch about your business. What is ThinkLite all about?
Dinesh Wadhwani:
So ThinkLite is a technology company based out of the Boston area here in Massachusetts. We specialize in high-end technologies, specializing in facilities, we started off in the energy space, which, which has grown into a, a large division and a company that there’s high-end efficiency lining for commercial applications. We, we have a division that does grow lighting for agriculture and poultry optimization. And most importantly, which has comes down to stage the last few years, we have an air division that specializes in very tiny particulate monitoring of viral loads in the air, in the healthcare space. And as you can imagine, that has kind across boundaries to go well beyond healthcare for the last few years. So that’s what we do as a company.
Denzil Mohammed:
So apart from the obvious, which is the pandemic and your most recent foray into the airspace why is your business important in today’s world?
Dinesh Wadhwani:
Our ethos really is we, I think like we call ourselves technologists, we love technology. We believe technology is gonna save our world and we love to build things that create value in a very impactful way. That’s really who we are and what we are all about. And, and our supply chain extends from designing stuff in Boston to Germany, where we do a lot of engineering and to Asia, where we do a lot of the semiconductor manufacturing and we work very closely with Samsung as well. And so South Korea. So, so if you think about it, given the talent that we are fortunate to have cultivated over the years and our interest and what we believe in we have always felt that we want to build products and services and bring it to the world in a very innovative but effective way that can add a value for sustainability, for wellbeing and for challenging the wasteful practices of, you know, of our current planet.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
And we started there with, you know, bringing to market, you know, the first of its kind ultra efficient, we were 30 to 50% more efficient than traditional and about 90% more efficient than your traditional fluorescent fly. And then that evolved into smart building and smart lighting, because that was kind of where the opportunity became now that you had efficient lighting. What else can you do if you made them smart and turn them on and off and dim them, you could further optimize it. And then that kind of pivoted into how can we use everything we know about lighting and smart buildings to add value beyond it, energy savings. And this kind happened around 2015, where we were studying together in the executive team. And I, and we said, if you think about it, it’s kind of quite an quite an amazing phenomenon that you have lights almost every feet in the building with a fixture electricity come up through it. It gotta do more than just save you money. And that’s when we said, how can we apply everything we know about small building, smart building automation, mind manipulating spectrums of light and creating different waves of light and marrying that with other chemical compositions to add value in a different way. And, and that’s how we got into our agricultural lighting. We got into poultry lighting and then along the same concepts, and around the same time we got into how we could use light spectrum to do this infection as well.
Denzil Mohammed:
So Dinesh, you’re from Ghana originally grew up speaking English and your grandparents were from India. Is that right?
Dinesh Wadhwani:
That’s correct. Yes.
Denzil Mohammed:
So this is a very fascinating, but of also a very common story of migration, not only from India, but from other countries, but take us back and tell us exactly what happened, how and why.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
Sure. My granddad was actually one of seven brothers and he was our original hometown is a state called Sen in the North Western part of India. And during the 1940s and the time of colonization when India was being divided into India and Pakistan, a lot of people in the middle kinda lost their homes. Cause you know, what was considered a general area was it’s now being divided politically into different countries. So my granddad and his and his brothers actually went to hide, you know, British votes to prevent being a prisoner of war or going to fight. And these votes were trading with other British colonies at that time. And, and that’s literally how my, my granddad ended up in Ghana, Western Africa, which at that time was a, was a British colony as well. And many of his brothers, you know, ended up in Hong Kong.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
So today, you know, fast forward, you know, 60, 70 years, we have a lot of family there and some came to the us, but it was a, it was a common practice of those who didn’t wanna be part of the political situation and wanted to leave would go to the other colonies that you know, was, was, was ruling the countries at that at those times. So my granddad went there and, and, you know, he, he made a living for himself. He, he adapted, he was an entrepreneur and raised a family there. And that’s when my dad was born and that’s when my brother myself and my younger sister were born. And that became home.
Denzil Mohammed:
That’s really fascinating. But again, as you said, it, it’s, it’s not an uncommon story. And just to be clear, your, your grandfather’s options were really slim. It was either fighting a war convert to Islam or escape. Right.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
Right. And, and many would actually seek refuge in India. And, and many people did that, where they would go, but start from scratch. Right. They, they didn’t have a home state. They lost all your property. They lost all your jobs. They lost all their land and just have a start from scratch.
Denzil Mohammed:
And you, obviously, you we’re able to straddle to very different, I would say kinds of cultures Western Africa, Indian subcontinent. So how is your experience of being an immigrant from another country, you know, has that impacted your business style or, or the kinds of goals you set for yourself?
Dinesh Wadhwani:
Yeah, definitely. I, and I think most, most immigrants who come to the us for better opportunities or for a better, better life can probably relate to this is there’s so many things over here in the us that many people take for granted and, and growing up, we were not exposed to many of these facility or still infrastructure stuff like internet. I remember growing up, there were times where Ghana during the nineties had something called load shedding, where there was not enough lecture study on the grid. So they would publish in the newspaper that for this week from 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM, you’re not gonna have electricity. Right. So I remember when my brother and I would come home and we had to finish all our homework before it gets dark. Cause when it gets dark, you there’s nothing much you can do with a candle, go to bed.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
Right? Little things like this, where we, we grew up of being the norm and that’s the life we need. And when we, when I came to the us you realized how much more advanced the infrastructure is. And, and you realize how much of an opportunity this is to be able to have faster internet, to be able to have good roads or infrastructure, to move around, to meet people. And, and to me, there is so much here to be grateful of that we didn’t have growing up. And that changes your perspective, you know, and, and, you know, most immigrants status that, you know, the United States is a lot of opportunity because there is a good infrastructure that creates enough opportunity for you, you to come from nothing. Right. I remember when I came here, I didn’t know anybody. And it’s not, it’s less about who, you know, specifically, which how it works back home in Ghana too.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
You could, you could now have a lot of information and have a lot of skills, but it comes down to, you know, who, you know, for the most part, while that is important over here, of course, you know, this so many cases we see every single day where someone would come far away from, from country knowing no, no one, but worked really hard. Worked honestly worked in to develop certain skills and become successful. And I think it’s just very well balanced society that we have in the us that creates a platform for doing that. So it makes me always grateful what we have here. Most countries don’t have that. And, and it changes your attitude. You wake up every morning and you say, you gotta seize. This opportunity
Denzil Mohammed:
Makes you more humble, more grateful, more appreciative that that’s fascinating to,
Dinesh Wadhwani:
But it does,
Denzil Mohammed:
You know, 12 hours a day. You don’t have electricity that, isn’t that just crazy to think about now. Yeah. So you came to the us in 2008 as a student on your student visa, you went to Babson cause you already spoke English, but adapting to the US culture is always a challenge and an experience for everyone.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
So my dad would say through my entire high school and when I was starting, when I wanted, where I want to go to school, what I wanna study, he would say, Hey, listen, you have a good plan B if things don’t work out, you know, you can always come back to Ghana and we can either you work in the family business, or, you know, we, we are Old Timers here and we can find some opportunities for you, but frankly go through the United States, make a better life for yourself and don’t come back. Right. And, and that was the message that, you know, he, he gave me and my brother when, when we came here to study. And, you know, when I, when I came in Atlanta, Logan app, I remember it was the day before probably orientation and I land. And, and I still remember this the day till today is like, okay, here’s where I gotta make my life. Right. My goal is to learn, obviously, you know, make new relationships and meet new people, but it’s really gonna make a living for myself. And the goal is to make the family proud and take advantage of, you know, my education and what I’m coming here to do of what they have sent me here to do and, and not go back.
Denzil Mohammed:
So you found it ThinkLite in 2009, in just a few years, you were in 14 different countries. Like that must have been a rollercoaster.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
It was. And, I would say that that almost every single connection of that in came from the Babson community, which is quite incredible. It’s very international as you probably know, and a lot of friends and I was fortunate enough to be on the scholarship program on my back. So I had the opportunity to meet with the trustees who also were from all over the world and they would be intrigued with and, and what would be doing. And it was, it was quite a very supportive, you know, environment where I remember doing classes where I would tell the professor, I got a over the next three weeks because we have these, you know, big projects or big deals that I think I have to be there for. And the professor would say, keep a diary of it and I’ll accept it as thesis, you know very real and, and, and, and very quickly given the small community was many of the professors, the Dean, the president at that time were following ThinkLite very closely.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
And today I’m so ever grateful to them because of the support that I received. And they would be making introductions all the time and the exposure we got, you know, within the us, of course, but even internationally was we got to seize the opportunity. So the next thing I know, they would say, this is incredible technology and you are spending a lot of money for businesses and make more of impact in the US, you know, can you come and do it, you know, in the United Kingdom, can you come and do it in Thailand? Can you come and do it in Singapore? And I was like, absolutely. And they would say, and, you know, they, they would, they would literally treat, treat it like a real business and they would say, okay, great. You have a team that can come over and train people. And I would say, yes, let’s go. And there was, I would forget many times that I’m still still in college, you know, and I have to attend class and I would say, I’ll come back and catch up. And, and I would go, so it was throughout, you know, from 2010, all the way up to 2015 there was a lot of expansion internationally where we were building a foundation in those countries where we had large distributors and, and we were making all impacts without technologies over there, which fostered growth in the US and vice versa too.
Denzil Mohammed:
You’re not quite doing exactly what you did at the beginning. So, so tell us how the pandemic impacted your business.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
Sure. So, you know, around 2015, we made a conscious decision of how can we leverage our technology, our experience, our relationships, and the marketplace to do more than just save energy, right. Like I mentioned before, and I think the single most important change that I personally experienced and at the company was we start an, an initiative to say each time we would close a, a big project and go do a lighting project for them. I would like to speak to the head of facilities or the head of our operations myself personally, and say, can you please tell me a little bit more about the other problems you’re facing when you’re challenging in your workplace or your facility? One of the biggest things that really changed the trajectory of our company was this initiative to ask customers what else we can do for them.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
And that’s why we learned a lot more. We learned more about a lot more opportunities that we can address, whether it was, they have good lighting, but it wasn’t smart enough, or they had good lighting, but they needed to have a unique spectrum of light to increase their yield of produce, or when talking to hospitals, which is most, most relevant. You know, in this day and ages, we were working with Boston children’s hospital back in 2017. And, you know, we learned from the facilities, people that they, this number one challenge was hospital acquired infection to via the air. And this is not something that’s unique to any particular hospital. This is something that exists forever, right? And if you think about it, when people come to the hospital, well, you’re sick. You know, dear coughing, you’re spreading terms of diseases. And simultaneously you have people there who are undergoing surgery, or who have compromised immune systems who are unwell.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
And these two groups of people are on the same roof, sharing the same air. It’s quite a recipe for disaster. And, and unfortunately there’s no better way, right? I mean, that’s just the nature of, of, of how the facilities and what happens all the time, which really caught my heart was the number one cause of debt in our country was secondhand transmission of germs in these hospitals. And, and, and I’m discussing that saying, we are replacing fixtures every three feet. They’re gonna be a better weight. And that’s when the idea of producing a light fixture that can also purify the air at the same time was born. And that evolved into less leverage of technology to now monitor it and make it smart. So we even know how bad the air is to start with, and we can always keep it that way. And then it evolved into let’s make connected to the HVAC system.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
So it could be even smarter and involved into, you know, less external alone units. Here. We have found a software, we built an entire ecosystem of technology that could monitor the air, tell you if there’s a viral load in the air light fixtures that would seamlessly clean the air free of these viral particles. And the whole world was, you know, coming to a standstill because of an airborne virus. And it, it, it took COVID 19 or global pandemic for people to realize that you don’t need to be in a hospital to, to share air with someone to get disease from that that’s when, for the first time we learned that what we thought was a niche in the healthcare world is now something that is applicable everywhere else. And, and that’s how the pandemic really changed our ThinkLite air division. And next thing we know our marketplace just, you know, expanded by infinite-fold really of the addressable market.
Denzil Mohammed:
Oh, wow. Dinesh. That’s incredible. So finally, Dinesh, as an immigrant to the us, you know, your grandparent was, was taken in by Ghana and you were taken in by the us and this country has allowed you, your family and your business to thrive. How do you feel about the United States of America as, as your adopted homeland?
Dinesh Wadhwani:
There’s a very admirable amount of respect in this country for people who work hard for people who are trying to make a positive impact. And, you know, whoever you share with, in my experience, what you’re trying or what our business is about they’ll say, Hey, talk to this person. Or, you know, have you thought of that? And, this, this celebration of solving problems in this country, I feel this country as a whole really promotes entrepreneurship and promotes originality. It promotes, trying to just do good. And by doing good, trying to create good value for people, very few people can say that about the experience going to any other country really, and, and being embraced and being part of the community to say, Hey, we are here creating, creating impact, creating jobs for the people in the country is really, it is really a nice, a nice feeling. So I’m, I’m always gonna be grateful to this country for that.
Denzil Mohammed:
I think one of the things that makes the United States extra special is that it celebrates entrepreneurship and innovation no matter where you come from
Dinesh Wadhwani:
That’s right.
Denzil Mohammed:
You know, it’s the idea, it’s the hard work and it’s the value that creates it. And I hope that you, and ThinkLite are able to continue creating value and having a positive impact and purifying our air. Please, we need that a lot. Absolutely. We will continue doing our best to educate people on, on this topic. That is, that is so important and affects their bottom line, right?
Dinesh Wadhwani:
Yes, that’s right. And thank you. And it’s a joy to see the impact that the immigrant learning center does in empowering, you know, whether it’s by your language, by your life skills, then it’s, it’s always been close to my heart. So it’s, I, I admire that. And it’s such an important thing that we need to have for people who come here with, you know, with, with a twinkle in the eye and for opportunity and giving them these skills and giving them these tools to, to help them fulfill their dreams is something that’s close to my heart. So, so thank you for that.
Denzil Mohammed:
That’s very nice for you to say, Dinesh, thank you so much, Dinesh Wadhwani, founder and CEO of ThinkLite. Thank you for joining us on JobMakers.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
Thank you, Denzil true pleasure.
Denzil Mohammed:
Job makers is a weekly podcast about immigrant entrepreneurship and contribution produced by pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston and the Immigrant Learning Center in Malden, Massachusetts, a not for profit. That gives immigrants a voice. Thanks for joining us for today’s incredible story of immigrant entrepreneurship, but comments, questions, or know someone we should talk to email Denzil that’s D E N Z I L @ Jobmakers.podcast.org. I’m Denzil Muhammad. See you next Thursday at noon for another job makers.
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/in Blog: Education, Blog: US History, Civil Rights Education, Civil Rights Podcasts, Featured, Podcast, US History /by Editorial StaffThis week on “The Learning Curve,” co-host Gerard Robinson and guest co-host Kerry McDonald talk with Howard Bryant, a senior writer for ESPN and the author of nine books, including Full Dissidence: Notes From an Uneven Playing Field and The Heritage: Black Athletes, A Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism. Bryant shares how his experiences as a student, baseball fan, and sportswriter growing up in 1970s-era Boston have shaped his understanding of race relations and sports. He discusses celebrated American athletes who have broken barriers, from Jackie Robinson and Celtics legend Bill Russell to the Williams sisters and Tiger Woods. Bryant describes how these pioneering athletes were treated, and how they handled their celebrity status. He also offers thoughts on how the multi-billion-dollar professional sports industry is addressing larger racial disparities.
Stories of the Week: In San Francisco, a recall election ousted three members of the Board of Education, after a period of remote learning challenges, controversial school renaming process, admissions policy changes, and other issues. Democratic strategists are raising concerns about their party’s weak positioning on education issues, which will likely continue to play a major role in this election cycle.
Tweet of the Week
News Links
Education, traditionally a strength, has Democrats on their heels
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/02/21/democrats-education-politics-race-covid/
In Landslide, San Francisco Forces Out 3 Board of Education Members
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/16/us/san-francisco-school-board-recall.html
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Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
[00:00:00] GR: Listeners. This is Gerard Robinson. Welcome to another wonderful session of The Learning Curve. Recently, I’ve had an opportunity to cohost with someone else who you’ve already heard from, and this week I get a chance to co-host again. My regular cohost Cara is trotting around the earth, and so we want to make sure her and her family’s got a great time.
[00:00:39] But we always want to make sure that we get great people on here, uh, , to talk to our guests and to also talk to you. And so of course, we reached out to Kerry McDonald who has been with us before and Kerry, welcome back to The Learning Curve.
[00:00:52] Kerry: Oh, it’s great to be back with you, Gerard. Thanks for inviting me
[00:00:56] GR: or things for you.
[00:00:58] Carrie: Things are doing great. my [00:01:00] primary work is with a foundation for economic education. The country’s oldest free market think tank. And I just launched a new podcast, the liberated podcast, which is a weekly podcast on, education related issues that kind of connect to free markets and individual Liberty.
[00:01:16] GR: Well, I’ve definitely retweeted, several of the posts that you sent out and you always keep things really interesting. So when we talk about polls, we also talk about stories and, , I’ve got one story of the week and you’ve got one as well as our guests. I’ll let you kick us off with telling us, the story that.
[00:01:33] Kerry: Sure. So my article I thought was really interesting for us to talk about today is from the Washington post and it is entitled, education. Traditionally, a strength has Democrats on their heels. It was, posted on February 22nd. It looks like, and it really, I think describes some of the challenges that democratic.
[00:01:58] Are confronting and will continue to [00:02:00] confront over the coming months, , in terms of re-election campaigns or, , getting into office. And this was made clear, certainly when we all saw, Virginia governor Glenn Yuncken, , when the gubernatorial race they’re running on a platform of parents matter, , as the kind of contrarion to his opponent who was sort of downplaying the role of.
[00:02:23] In the classroom and education. And I think Democrats are realizing that they have an uphill climb here, in kind of sidelining parents. And, they’re kind of strategizing what they can do about
[00:02:34] Howard: it. As you
[00:02:35] GR: know, both of us are big proponents of parental opportunity, parental choice. And as you mentioned, Virginia, of course, I live here in Charlottesville, supported the governor, also supported, our now Lieutenant governor.
[00:02:47] And the attorney general parents matter, but when you really want to see how much they matter, go after things they think are important. And so in Northern Virginia, when there was a big push to change the entrance [00:03:00] requirements and to Thomas Jefferson high school, arguably the best public high school in the country, when they began to tinker with, what I would often call color coding classrooms, for purposes of equity.
[00:03:11] Legitimately, we should have questions and concerns about equity and opportunity, but it was done in a way that made parents across the racial and economic barriers. Say something about this just seems like you’re trying to cook the books and we don’t like it. And so with that, Also with the fact that Virginia was one of the top five states, to open up their public schools for the least amount of time, , with millions of dollars point in it just made people think differently and ask different questions.
[00:03:39] And so I think what we saw here in Virginia, , is an example of what we may see in other places. And in fact, that leads me to my story of the week, , from the New York times. And it’s focused on the, we call of three school board members in San Francisco. Now let’s go back a year. And when you think of San Francisco, you think about, , the [00:04:00] progressive things, school boards done, you think about the opportunities to try to give low-income students.
[00:04:05] You talk about the city being very progressive and yet when they decided to move forward with a, a plan to say, we’re going to change, the requirements to create a lottery system in order to allow students to go into low high school. my friends who graduated from law would never want me to say that I’m comparing low.
[00:04:25] To Thomas Jefferson in Virginia. But what I will say is that low is arguably one of the best public high schools in the country. Like a Thomas Jefferson. it’s a merit base, system to get in. And they were tinkering with that again, for issues of equity, like a low high school, where approximately 50% of the students are Asian Thomas Jefferson high school.
[00:04:47] even a larger percentage. And so you had that taking place, plus as an, in Virginia, at least in San Francisco, they were not opening up the schools as fast as people would have wanted, even when they were [00:05:00] given a green light by the authorities to do so. And then when you couple that with crusade by some of the members to change the names of some of the schools, understandably some of the names were, are affiliated with horrible aspects of American history.
[00:05:16] And he said, we should change that we should move forward. Will you bring these three things into play parents ask two simple questions. Number one, I hear what you saying, but what are you doing for my children and their education right now? And there wasn’t much, they saw really taking place.
[00:05:31] And number two, they said, well, you as an elected board, What are you going to do to try to change the dynamics of how we move forward? And after a law campaign, three board members were ousted. And to put it in perspective, when you look at the fact that you’ve got, you know, 70% of the voters who turned out and said, listen, we want to recall the members out of the.
[00:05:54] 499,771 registered voters, [00:06:00] 128,862, , were counted and they basically supported the, we call 74, uh, 4% for one candidate and moved 70% for the others. Uh, the board of supervisors would not have to certify the results. those three board members will be replaced by the. the mayor will appoint three new members and then of course there’ll be an election coming forward.
[00:06:19] And so this is just another example of families deciding not to wait for politicians to make decisions for them. they decided to, , vote with their actual vote and to do some things there. So , it’s a big shakeup in that system. this has been the year. , I would say within the last year and a half of school board, uh, recall efforts more than we’ve seen in the last 10 years.
[00:06:43] So San Francisco is an interesting story. And even when we talk about San Francisco as a school system, there are some great things are taking place in this school system. We overlook the fact that there are over night. Private schools in San Francisco that you have approximately 22,000 students in private [00:07:00] schools.
[00:07:00] You have, again, a little more than 55,000 in the school system. Most of them, , many of them, students of color, and so in a place that promotes equity opportunity and equality. Then seem to really pan itself out in the city and the voters have spoken.
[00:07:15] Kerry: Yeah. And I think you’re right. It was a breathtaking recall of those three school board members in what is considered a very left leaning progressive city.
[00:07:24] But yet. Similar themes to what we were just talking about related to the Virginia race and, certainly other democratic races coming up that parents are frustrated, particularly with ongoing coronavirus policies in schools, they want more of a voice. they want school board members to be accountable and to be focusing on the issues that really matter to them.
[00:07:47] And so, you know, I think it would be certainly an interesting campaign cycle. This.
[00:07:51] GR: I remember some years ago when the tea party, , started to make its rise in local state and then national politics,[00:08:00] , speaker Pelosi referred to it as AstroTurf, and then ended up becoming a real grassroots movement. when you take a look at this current recall, there are some people who are saying.
[00:08:09] These aren’t real parents who were fired up. These were really , hedge fund, , executives, , these were millionaires. These were moms and dads, some who didn’t have children, the public school, who are the ones that put up money to support taking neighborhoods for a better San Francisco or other initiatives.
[00:08:29] And when I heard you hear people say that, I said, well, Hey. Even if you don’t have a child in your public school system, you’re still a tax payer. And so you’re paying into that system. Even if you have children in private schools, you also can still vote for someone on the post-school board and in California, which is a big, not only, , it’s a referendum state, you often put things before voters, to do so.
[00:08:49] People from the left and the right put millions of dollars into campaigns every year. In fact, Just recently, with Gavin Newson his, we call race. And so I just find it interesting [00:09:00] when certain groups of people lose, we say it’s money. When they, when we see its voters,
[00:09:06] Kerry: right. And I, again, I think that if politicians continue with this strategy of demonizing parents and, , , painting them as something that they’re not and, you know, criticizing their motives and that sort of thing, it’s just going to backfire, on these politicians.
[00:09:23] GR: The work that you’re doing at your think tank and of course, what you’re learning with your own research and your podcasts, what are you hearing parents say? Are they feeling empowered just across the board. They still feel that their attack where it’s just somewhere in the middle.
[00:09:36] Kerry: Yeah. You know, I’ve been really interested in the flood of education, entrepreneurship that has emerged over the past couple of years.
[00:09:45] Parents demanding more options, wanting various alternatives to an assigned district school, and then entrepreneurs stepping up to create these new options and provide more choices for families. And of course, we’re also seeing it on the [00:10:00] policy side too, with school choice legislation, expanding in many states.
[00:10:04] And there being a lot of momentum for that. And I think we’ll continue to see that. So the combination of education, entrepreneurship, and legislative changes that it expand school choice policies at the state level, think are really going to be a win for families across the country.
[00:10:19] GR: I had an opportunity to travel to Milwaukee, last fall blues, September.
[00:10:24] To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Milwaukee parental choice program. at that, well still is the, urban based, pro-choice school voucher program in the country. I say urban based because as we know, some new England states in fact have had, you know, pro-choice programs, going back to the 19th century, what was so enlightening to me, I would all, maybe, maybe it’s frightening to me where the number of young people that say.
[00:10:49] 25, who, when they heard about, you know, the role that a Polly Williams played As movement, African-American Democrat, state representative, single mom who had one [00:11:00] time was, a campaign person for Jesse Jackson in the eighties when he ran for office, , it was her partnering with, , a Republican governor partnering.
[00:11:09] With other Democrats and some Republicans to say, we want to make this happen. And they were shocked to know ane that there was actually bipartisan support for vouchers at the beginning. And number two, that in fact it was a group of parents who actually pushed for this to happen because in their world, They think what they hear now about parental empowerment is actually new.
[00:11:29] When in fact it’s been going on for decades on both sides of the fence, but at least as it may remains with , , the modern, I would call the modern school choice movement. Many of them really are shocked to know that it used to be bi-partisan and that there was actually a parental voice in this.
[00:11:46] Yeah.
[00:11:46] Kerry: And again, I think , that over the past couple of years, , as parents have been frustrated with school closures and remote learning and unpredictability of, , their children’s classrooms, that’s really, , inspired parents to become more [00:12:00] involved and maybe to look at school choice, when they wouldn’t have previously, they would have made a thought it was a political, angle or not know much about it, and then kind of living it over the past couple of years and saying, gee, my school’s closed for in-person learning.
[00:12:15] Wouldn’t it be nice if I was able to take my tax dollars elsewhere, for example, you know, that kind of, , personalization of school choice, I think has really captured a lot of parents attention.
[00:12:26] GR: Are there some lessons that you think you and I should share? The entrepreneurs who are now involved in the work, uh, families who may be new to the movement, any thoughts , , from our experience that we could share for them to have them avoid some of the pitfalls that we may have seen when we initially got.
[00:12:44] Kerry: That’s such a great question, , for entrepreneurs, I think it’s spotting needs and a demand from parents in specific areas, and then imagining these new possibilities and new solutions beyond perhaps what we think of as conventional schooling. I think that’s one thing,[00:13:00] , that this coronavirus response has triggered is really looking at education beyond schooling and seeing all of the different ways that it can be done.
[00:13:08] I think for example, Startup here in the Boston area called Kai pod learning that participated in the prestigious Y Combinator startup accelerator program in Silicon valley and has some, , investment backing there. And they’re doing some really great things about bringing, , Students together, multi age, kind of a micro school environment in these sort of commercial storefront, , areas with adult facilitators, but the students bring with them an online curriculum or, , some kind of virtual learning system that they’ve created or that they’ve purchased, or perhaps even one of the public ones.
[00:13:42] And then. With other students during the day in these spaces that are facilitated by adults, that, the adults create these enrichment opportunities for kids. And so it kind of breaks down some of the barriers that we see with remote learning, some of the, , separation that students might feel some of the loneliness [00:14:00] That back into kind of a real learning space, but still customizable with kind of the benefits of remote learning. So I think we’ll still continue to see more of those kinds of, , innovations and entrepreneurship. And then the key really, I think for policy makers, , is to remove barriers. Entrepreneurs in general, and especially for education entrepreneurs, lower regulations and, encourage this growth of education alternatives throughout, various
[00:14:27] GR: states.
[00:14:28] I agree. the thing that I would share with entrepreneurs and parents is not to take a legislative victory for granted. legislature has change, either because a change in party or you can still have members of the same party in power, but they can change their point of view. I mean, to think today that you have, Democrats in DC and in state legislatures.
[00:14:52] Arguing to either stop the momentum for charter schools or to try to get rid of them altogether, would have been thought of as [00:15:00] heresy. We think about the fact that, president bill Clinton was the one who helped to create, it became charter school week, the office of charter schools and the department of ed.
[00:15:09] It was in fact in your state, Tom Birmingham, California, Gary Hart. , Mr. Young in Minnesota, it was Democrats. In fact who helped lead the charter school movement and played a strong role in open up those doors of opportunities to family. We’ll fast forward, , today, 30 years later in not looking the same.
[00:15:29] So I would definitely say don’t rest on your laurels because a governor signs, a bill, you have to remain tenacious and follow what’s going on. That means you have to go to all the board meetings, if you can great, but work with organizations, , advocacy groups that actually follow this work because that’s one of the things that shocked me 30 years, , into this work that some of our friends, have become enemies.
[00:15:52] And some of our enemies have become friends and that some people who believe parental choice was important 15 years ago, [00:16:00] think it’s a albatross.
[00:16:02] Kerry: Yeah, I think that’s why it really points to the need for culture change and really kind of reaching the hearts and minds of parents because you’re right. You know, politicians change, political momentum, sways, different directions.
[00:16:15] And so it really is about, showing parents the real benefit of education choice.
[00:16:21] GR: Absolutely anything else you want to share with our listeners? That’s on your mind, maybe even not the article that you read, but something else you want us to know before we go to our guests.
[00:16:31] Kerry: No, I’m really excited for our guests.
[00:16:33] Of course, I’m a Bostonian, a lifelong Bostonian and a sports fan here. So be great to talk to.
[00:16:40] GR: Yeah, listeners, the him, that she’s talking about going to join us. It’s Howard Bryant. He is the author of nine award-winning books focused on sports, , particularly. And so we’ve got some questions for him.
[00:16:54] Look forward to bringing them on board. Now you grew up in Boston. I grew up in Los Angeles, big Dodgers [00:17:00] fan. So that part I won’t hold against you. I’ll try to stay away from some of the, uh, west coast, questions, but, look forward to having him and I look forward to us tack TIMI for that part of the show.
[00:17:09] Absolutely. Okay. We’ll be right.
[00:17:41] Well, I’m so excited to have Howard Brian joined us for a conversation. How it, Brian is the author of nine award-winning book. Full distance, no Trump, an uneven playing ground all the way to books about sisters and champions. The true story of Venus and Serena Williams [00:18:00] illustrated by Floyd Cooper and he’s contributed, essays to 14 others.
[00:18:04] He’s been a senior writer for ESPN since 2007 and has served as a sports correspondent for NPR. It can addition Saturday, since 2006, previously Howard Brian worked at the Washington post, the Boston Herald the record in, Hackensack, New Jersey and the San Jose mercury news. The fact that we’ll also going to add the Oakland Tribune.
[00:18:28] In addition, he’s appeared in several documentaries, including baseball, the 10th inning and Jackie Robinson, both directed by Ken burns and major league. Hank Aaron, which was produced by Smithsonian and major league baseball. Howard, thank you so much for
[00:18:45] Howard: joining us now. It’s my pleasure.
[00:18:46] Thank you for that.
[00:18:47] Kerry: Howard, I’m going to kick us off with some questions. , you grew up in Boston in the 1970s. I’m born and raised in the Boston area and also a big Boston sports fan. Grew up. I grew up in the [00:19:00] south shore in Weymouth. Yeah.
[00:19:01] Howard: We used to play. Probably when we moved to Plymouth, I’d played at Plymouth, Carver, and we played Weymouth with north and Weymouth, south that’s right.
[00:19:10] Yeah.
[00:19:10] Kerry: Well, when I was there, , consolidated back to Weymouth high, so yeah, I graduated in 95. Yeah. But , the old colony league and. Yeah, good memories. So your first book is shut out a story of race and be baseball in Boston. Would you share with our listeners some of the history of abolitionism, ethnic conflict and deeply troubling race relations that sets the larger context for understanding Boston, the red Sox and race, as well as your own personal experiences, being a student baseball fan and sports writer in.
[00:19:49] Howard: Sure. Well, I think that one of the things about that book that has always appealed to me and it appealed to me at the time, which is why I wanted to do it was I think when you grow up black in [00:20:00] Boston and you’re a baseball. So much of your fandom is rooted in the history of the red Sox that the red Sox were the last team to integrate in 1959 with Pumpsie green.
[00:20:10] And not only that, but they could have been the first, they had an opportunity to the first chance to sign Jackie Robinson in 1945. And didn’t do it. So not only did they miss out on Jackie Robinson, but instead of becoming the first, the pioneer, they became the last, which was, Infamous for that franchise.
[00:20:27] And in between they had opportunities to sign numerous great players, including they had the first shot at Billy Mays in 1948. And so these stories played on top of each other and. As time went on. As you know, I grew up in the seventies and even then the red Sox did not really have a high number of black players.
[00:20:45] Race was always central. Of course, during that time you had busing as well happening with the, public schools of the racial imbalance act. And all of this to me had always been written through the lens of.[00:21:00] Everybody, but the black people who had to live it, it was about whether or not the folks in Southie felt aggrieved or whether or not judge Garrity.
[00:21:08] His ruling was fair or not fair, whether or not Tom Yaki was a racist. And all of these things didn’t take into account the humanity of the players, of the African-American players who had to live in Boston or the African-American kids who had to go to those schools and deal with what was taking place or the black face.
[00:21:27] Who had to make these decisions like my family, about whether or not they were going to put their kids in that environment. And so you grow up and you become a journalist and this is eating at you. And one of the reasons I became a journalist was the idea of watching a basketball game or watching a baseball game, and then reading the story in the Boston globe the next day or the Herald.
[00:21:48] And you say, well, that’s not what I remember. So I love the idea of being able to say what I thought happened last night. And. How I want it to represent these different pieces of history. And so that was [00:22:00] really Genesis of that book. And I think that one of the interesting things about that project was learning everything that was taking place in between, and that there, the red Sox, the red Sox have always had a prominent place in the history of race and major league baseball.
[00:22:17] But they really weren’t that different from any other team at that time. I mean, the Yankees were just as racist as the red Sox. So with the tigers in the Philadelphia Phillies, they weren’t really unique. What made them unique was even when the game began to integrate, even after Jackie Robinson and after Willie Mays and Henry Aaron and Frank Robinson and all those great players, even then the red Sox still, when everybody else was moving forward, the red Sox stadium.
[00:22:44] And they’d stayed behind as a franchise. The red Sox were sued twice by the Massachusetts commission against discrimination for not hiring any black employees. both I believe in 1951 and also in 1959. So this history was [00:23:00] deeply embedded in the franchise and it made rooting for the team. A very curious experience.
[00:23:07] Maybe
[00:23:07] Kerry: we can dig deeper into this. You’ve mentioned Jackie Robinson. Of course he’s among the most celebrated sports figures in American history. Could you discuss his infamous tryout with the Red Sox in April of 1945 and how he and other black players, including Reggie Smith, Jim Rice, Dennis oil can Boyd and
[00:23:27] Mookie Betts were treated in Boston. And why?
[00:23:31] Howard: I think that tryout is one of the great moments in baseball history, because it shows you that. It always frustrated me when people would refer to baseball integration as the color line as if it were this immutable space that somehow was like broken.
[00:23:46] And instead integration had been a conversation. It had been an issue that had been going on, obviously since the 18 hundreds, since black players were kicked out of the game in the late 18 hundreds. And so everyone has had known what was taking place. And everyone [00:24:00] knew that, integration or segregation in baseball was very much in line with the increasing segregation and Jim Crow that was taking place across the country.
[00:24:08] And so. You come out of World War two and world war two is the fight for freedom world war two is the referendum that freedom triumphed over fascism. And that this was , a Titanic struggle for the human spirit. And yet this is how black people are being treated in the United States. And so the entire idea, not just in.
[00:24:32] the military, because let’s not forget that during this Titanic struggle for freedom. The United States military is segregated. They’re not an integrated unit until 1948. And so how long could you keep this society separate? How long could this last while these other events are taking place around the world and while the United States is positioning itself as.
[00:24:55] the Victor, as the difference maker in terms of the direction of [00:25:00] world history. And one of the areas where you saw this meritocracy needing to be corrected was in sports. Something as simple as sports as ridiculous as a baseball game. And you could see why this was so important because if these players could play together on the same thing, If they could travel together, if they could shower together, if they could eat together, if they could room together, then why can’t they go to school together?
[00:25:29] Why can’t they live in the same neighborhood? , so on the one hand, sports may seem ephemeral, but on the other hand, it’s extremely important because if these things can take place on a daily basis, then why can’t they take place in a daily basis in our everyday lives? So the red cell. We’re the first team to have an opportunity that integration simply because of one person has a door, much.
[00:25:47] Nick, a Boston city counselor from west Roxbury who had the temerity to demand that the red Sox lead in terms of living up to Boston’s history as one of the great integrated cities in the 17 [00:26:00] hundreds, as the place where you did have integrated schools early. to live up to Boston’s revolutionary war history, even though Boston was a loyalist city, but so be it.
[00:26:10] And, um, and the red Sox brought in three players, Marvin Williams, Jackie Robinson, and Sam Jethro on April 1945. And they hit a few balls and they wore red Sox uniform. So there’s, I wish there had been a photo of it where Jackie Robinson actually was wearing a Boston red Sox. And they hit a few balls and then they said, thank you very much.
[00:26:33] And none of the players ever heard from the red Sox again, and Jackie Robinson took that bitterness to his grave. Sam Jethro, as it turned out, ended up integrating in Boston. Anyway, five years later. With the Boston Braves and ended up winning rookie of the year. So he was the first. So he was in that trout in 1945.
[00:26:50] I ended up playing in Boston with the Braves before they moved to Milwaukee. And then of course now they play in Atlanta. So the deep history of race and [00:27:00] integration runs right through Boston, whether we want it to, or not, especially when you look at Boston’s history of abolition and part of that, that legend of Boston, part of that legacy of Boston, , people wanted to hold onto.
[00:27:12] And that, first 18, 17th, 18th century history, they wanted that to translate into the 20th century then of course it really didn’t. And so it’s interesting when you’re a longtime Bostonian, you know, the difference between what we grew up reading in the textbooks, and then what the history.
[00:27:32] Kerry: Really interesting.
[00:27:33] You know, we’ve been talking a lot about the red Sox, but let’s shift gears to the Celtics. One of the greatest athletes in Boston sports is the south X basketball legend bill Russell. Could you talk a little bit about his experiences playing in Boston, the late 1950s and sixties, and why even today there, you know, we have this modest statue downtown, but there seems to be little dedicated to bill Russell’s historic achievements and his.
[00:27:59] Yeah. [00:28:00] Yeah. Well,
[00:28:01] Howard: because this is the thing. , on the one hand, you have to think about what was taking place during this time. So on the one hand, in the 1940s, the 1945, you have the red Sox tryout. The red Sox don’t integrate the red Sox. Don’t integrate until 1959. The Braves integrate in 1950, but they move after the 1952 season to Milwaukee, the Celtics have read our back as their coach in the late fifties, they bring in bill Russell, they draft the trade for bill Russell in the 1956.
[00:28:28] And the Celtics become a dynasty and the Celtics not only become a dynasty, but the Celtics become leaders. If you contrast the red Sox and the Celtics, the red Sox have this miserable racial history and the Celtics. On the other hand, when eight straight championships, bill Russell wins 11 championships in 13 years, the Celtics break , the unspoken taboo in the NBA of always having a majority number of white players on the court.
[00:28:52] You always had to have. Three to two at the very least, or at the very, yeah, at the very moment, the very most, and that our back has five black [00:29:00] players on the court at the same time. So he breaks that unspoken rule red, our bag breaks the rule of having, at least the first black coach, the hires bill Russell in 1966 to be the first black head coach of the major sports.
[00:29:11] So on the one hand, you’ve got this terrible racial history. On the red Sox side and then across town over at north station, you’ve got this pioneering spirit with one major problem. Most fans didn’t want to watch black players and they didn’t really love basketball, basketball.
[00:29:27] Wasn’t a big sport at the time. And bill Russell had a miserable time. Living in Boston had a very, very difficult, difficult experience in Boston, in terms of how he navigated the city. He used to refer to it as a flea market of racism. And so, and I’m very, very proud guy. And so he was not going to be conciliatory toward the city.
[00:29:47] The city had brought. He won his championships and he had his relationships and then he left. And so that negotiation, that relationship had has been 60 years of attempted [00:30:00] reconciliations and silence in a lot of ways. I think things have obviously calmed down now, but for most of the time you looked at somebody, bill Russell was the greatest champion that this country has ever produced in terms of championing.
[00:30:14] ’cause before he came to the Celtics. He’d won back-to-back championships in college and an Olympic gold medal in 1956 in Melbourne. So this great champion was never really celebrated in Boston. And it’s only been in the last 20, 25 years where you could even see a little bit of a.
[00:30:31] GR: And the wonderful books that you’ve published. You’ve not only focused on baseball and basketball in Boston, your hometown, but you’ve also talked about sports, , across the area, including, what we’re looking at in terms of. A school and, NCA sports. So when I think about sports today from youth to high school, to college, even to the pros, it’s really a multi-billion dollar business and has got a wide appeal amongst pretty energetic fan base.
[00:30:59] The media [00:31:00] will cover it sports. The high school sports, , find its way into our popular culture. Could you talk about the current state of the NCAA and professional sports regarding which leagues are doing a better job than the other and addressing larger racial disparities or even concern it’s about, what does it look like in our national debate?
[00:31:19] Howard: Well, I think that if you go and look at the history of it, I think that sports is always going to be important. And at some point it became America’s religion. If you go back to the 18 hundreds, nobody cared about, I mean, baseball was a sport, but it didn’t matter. I mean, baseball and cycling and walking these in, horse racing later on would become these sports.
[00:31:41] But when you start looking at it in terms of how to become American, you have really three waves. And I think the first wave is. The immigration era where you have this great exit is coming from Europe during the industrial revolution of Italians and Jews and poles and Germans. And how did those kids become American?[00:32:00]
[00:32:00] Their parents didn’t speak English, but they became Americanized by playing sports, by playing baseball in the street and boxing. And in the rest of it, this was the pathway Americanizing for those first generations of immigrants. And the second way. Is the integration error. Once again, when you think about the large American institutions, the institution of sports integrated before all of them sports integrated before most schools sports innovated before the military sports integrated before television sports integrated, before journalism integrated before all of it.
[00:32:31] And so, and especially when you’re looking at it from an inter-collegiate, , perspective, The predominantly white institutions, they weren’t looking at the HBC use for their doctors and their scientists and their lawyers. They wanted their ballplayers. So still at the, root of it all was the, use and utility of the black physical body.
[00:32:51] And that’s really the area where you started to seize the colleges integrate. And then of course you get to this third era, [00:33:00] which is the economic. And now that starting in the mid seventies, when you start to get free agency and baseball, and then obviously as the money gets bigger and all of the sports, the money also gets bigger in college sports.
[00:33:10] And as the money gets bigger and bigger. You see a change in the priority. And one of the arguments had always been in the integration of the athlete was that this was going to be a pathway for these black students, student athletes. They like to call them to have a broader experience, to be exposed to more and to get an education.
[00:33:31] And that there was a trade taking place. You were a physical prowess for the opportunity to be. a college campus. And now you look at it today and we know that a lot of these players aren’t being educated at all. They’re there to make money for their universities. And so that mission in so many ways has been lost.
[00:33:53] And you think about this from the standpoint now where the debate is, whether or not we [00:34:00] should just pay the players. and it’s a good argument to have considering that. the NCAA that college football and college basketball are so incredibly lucrative. And so you’re starting to see some of this change, but while it’s changing, you also have to say whatever happened to educating these students, whatever happened to educating these players.
[00:34:16] And so have we simply given up on that piece of it, and now we’re just going to admit that the players are there to earn they’re there to work, but they’re not, they’re totally.
[00:34:28] GR: good point. You mentioned student athletes and. I think of someone like Arthur Ashe, you played at UCLA tiger woods played at Stanford. the Williams sisters, in Compton playing sports, but mother and father making sure they take their, , academics pretty seriously. They’ve all been pioneering players, in a respective sport.
[00:34:49] And we also think about what that means in terms of. What’s sometimes in our communities call a bear in the cross for the race. Would you share your views about how these athletes were [00:35:00] treated, lessons learned and maybe even how they managed or mismanaged their status as celebrities in American
[00:35:07] Howard: culture?
[00:35:08] Well, I think that what you have. When it comes to black athletes and you see it. I talked about a lot of this in my 2018 book. The heritage, this responsibility that the black athlete has that they’re not supposed to have. And that’s the goal to me at least, is that one day they won’t have it, that black people are the only people in this country who relies so heavily on people who hit a ball with a stick or who put a ball through a hoop or who can run really fast.
[00:35:36] And. This all goes back to this deal that had been made during the 20th century about the ones who made it. The athlete is the one who made it and the athlete is the one who made it even more so than the entertainers. And the difference between. Prince and Michael Jackson’s and Diana Ross’s and beyoncé’s and count bases of the world is that you didn’t need a movement for them to [00:36:00] perform.
[00:36:00] They could always perform for white people. Go back to the cotton club, go back to the, go back. Even earlier into the 18 hundreds, black people have always performed for white people, but sports, you needed a movement sports. You actually had to have a physical movement that led into the civil rights ever even Martin Luther king used to say, you know, that Jackie Robinson was the beginning of the civil rights movement.
[00:36:20] And so because of that, there’s this responsibility that the black athlete has had to bear that cross. And I always refer to the black athlete. They are the most visible, the most successful and the most influential black employees this country’s ever produced. That is not always a compliment, but it is true.
[00:36:38] because this country has spent so much time using sports as the antidote to racism that. Places is it fair? But if my 40 time is faster than yours, if I score more runs than you, if I score more points than you, I get to win, then, that is supposed to be pure. Even though we know in sports, that’s not the case either, [00:37:00] but that has been the argument that sports could provide for us this pathway to what color blind list.
[00:37:05] It really doesn’t exist. But that’s why it’s so important. And that’s why we spend so much time looking at the Serena Williams is of the world and looking at the LeBron James of the world and hoping that they use their platform as we hear so often now the Colin Kaepernick’s that they are the ones who provide for us a level of visibility that really isn’t fair to them, but it is what it has been.
[00:37:30] This is what has been created. And to me, goal really shouldn’t be imploring the black athletes to constantly, you know, speak for black America. But that one day they can just play ball and let’s leave it to other people who are in better positions to lead us
[00:37:49] GR: a great point. In fact, that made me think of a question. When you talked about the black athlete, earlier. Let’s just go to school and just play sports. You’re not truly a scholar athlete. [00:38:00] And we overlooked the fact that our community has got a lot of examples of Scott, our athletes. I mean, I think of someone like, Chris Howard, who is a president of Robert Morris college.
[00:38:10] He went to the air force academy road scholar, doctorate from Oxford. And now he’s a college president, but he was a Campbell award winner when he was in college. And even if you go. Back in time, as you talk about history, you made me think about, uh, Dr. Roscoe brown, who is president of community college in New York, Tuskegee airmen.
[00:38:28] But you know what Biff for Jim brown, he was actually the one who was a major lacrosse player and later became a scholar in his own. Right? How do we close that gap? Or maybe open up the door to opportunity to talk about true scholar athletes, both men.
[00:38:45] Howard: Well, I think it’s a priority. It’s not just a black party.
[00:38:47] It’s a priority period. And what are your priorities? What are your values? What do you respect? And I think that we are completely as a country enamored [00:39:00] with. Lottery, this sort of capitalist lottery that one day you can be famous. I mean, that is not a, that is not even a racial designation. That’s what we all do.
[00:39:08] Everyone wants to play this lottery and, but the stakes are higher when you have less and black people as, uh, as a people have. So this magic bullet, the one who made it is the narrative that we all gravitate toward. And it’s very tiring. It’s very tiring to people in the black community who were like, Hey, this is not all there is.
[00:39:27] And think about what we’re doing to the people who don’t make it. And this whole idea of this narrative being dead or in jail. Well, if I weren’t for sports, I’d be dead or in jail. Well, if that is the case after all of these decades, That being able to bounce a ball is still your best chance. Then we failed.
[00:39:47] We failed miserably and yet that is still the prevailing narrative. And that’s why we pay so much attention to sports, not just because we’re entertained. And it’s amazing to watch Patrick my [00:40:00] homes or to watch Lamar Jackson play football. It’s because this is still the way outside. And it’s very tired and it shows you just how much institutional political failure,
[00:40:16] GR: Well, thanks to the work that you do, both in book, form essays, op-eds but also, , in movies, you’re starting to at least get us thinking us across the board on what it means to be American, what it means to be great, what it means to be a genius, both on the court and off the court, but also realizing that if we can’t get some of this right.
[00:40:38] Outside of sports, then we’re putting so much on the athletes to do, which is unfair to them. But thank you for your, intellectual ism, your humor, your wits, and your common sense approach to issues that are often tough for people to talk about. Thank you for the work you’re doing and,
[00:40:53] Howard: keep it up.
[00:40:54] No, it’s my pleasure. Thank you.[00:41:00]
[00:41:27] Kerry: So the tweet of the week, Gerard is a tweet by education week on February 21st. And I don’t know if you’re into. At all, but my kids are definitely into this new word game. , it’s daily activity and exercise that they have a lot of fun with. And so education, we tweeted out video saying you can pick up on patterns of words, , that matched together to make certain words and use more skills than you think.
[00:41:57] You do when you first start, this was a, for a [00:42:00] fourth grade teacher said that these teachers are using Wordle to teach phonics in their classrooms. So, just a really exciting, creative way of using what is right now, kind of a cultural trend to, , make learning better in the classroom.
[00:42:14] GR: Well, thank you for that tweet of the week.
[00:42:16] And for educating me, I will now take a. And next week’s guest is Linda Chavez, who is a senior fellow at the national immigration forum and the author of, out of the Barrio toward a new politics of Hispanic assimilation. Carrie, again, thank you so much for joining me as a co-host this week really enjoyed what you had to share from your story, but also the advice.
[00:42:40] That you share with all of us about not only entrepreneurship, but about parental choice, but just really to keep us thinking about what I believe is one of the most important social movements in the last quarter century. So glad you were
[00:42:52] Kerry: here with me. Always a pleasure, Gerard. Thanks again. Take
[00:42:55] GR: care, everyone.[00:43:00]
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Olympic-Scale Doctor Shortage: Tapping International Talent
/in Featured, Healthcare, Podcast Hubwonk /by Editorial StaffHost Joe Selvaggi talks with Pioneer Institute’s Senior Healthcare Policy Fellow Josh Archambault about the shortage of doctors in the U.S. and the potential for licensing reform to attract medical expertise from around the world to reduce future healthcare shortages and provide incentives for immigrating professionals to work in underserved communities. Read more in Forbes.
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Joe Selvaggi:
This is Hubwonk. I’m Joe Selvaggi.
Joe Selvaggi:
Welcome to Hubwonk, a podcast of Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston. Americans are facing a doctor shortage. This complex problem is driven in part by the increased medical demands of an aging baby boom generation, as well as the impending retirement of doctors who are themselves in the boomer demographic. While the supply of new doctors is constrained by medical school and residency program capacity, our owner’s licensing process also serves to limit the number of foreign trained doctors, immigrating to ease the supply. Indeed, even the most accomplished medical expert in the world would likely need to repeat his or her residency were they to immigrate to the United States, given the critical and growing shortage of physicians are the reforms to our licensing process that could attract qualified doctors from around the world to help serve the needs of an aging us population. My guest today is Pioneer Institute’s senior healthcare fellow, Josh Archambault. Mr. Archambault’s recent Forbes article entitled “Olympians trust international doctors. Can they help reduce the US physician shortage?” shines a light on the barriers facing foreign trained doctors who want to practice in the United States, but who must face the requirement to repeat residency? His speech suggests that common sense reforms to our poorly designed licensing process could offer the us healthcare system much needed expertise and even provide tools for medically underserved communities to attract much needed doctors. When I return, I’ll be joined by Pioneer institute’s Josh Archambault.
Joe Selvaggi:
Okay. We’re back. I’m Joe Selvaggi. This is Hubwonk. I’m now joined by Pioneer Institute’s senior healthcare fellow, Josh Archambault. Welcome back to the show. Josh
Josh Archambault:
Joe, thanks so much for having me back again.
Joe Selvaggi:
Good. Well, Josh it’s good to have you back. I was intrigued by some of the issues you brought up. You had a, a wonderful article in Forbes just this past week. I believe maybe a week and a half ago. And it was entitled Olympians trust international doctors. Can they help reduce the us physician shortage? I’ll, I’ll paraphrase it and say it brought up an interesting idea that with the Olympics that the ceremonies are finishing up this week our athletes can compete all over the world. They have access to some of the best doctors all over the world, but doctors can’t compete all over the world. They can’t just pick up and, and go where they like. And you wove that into an idea that couldn’t, we do more to help bring these doctors here if they like and perhaps address an impending shortage of doctors. So let’s unpack your argument of the article piece by piece. Let’s talk about, I think it was some of the Olympic athletes, the winter Olympic athletes couldn’t have access to the doctors that they had wanted say more about where, where those Olympic patients are right now.
Josh Archambault:
Yeah. So my co-author Jonathan and I were like many Americans watching the Olympics off and on over the last few weeks. And one of the stories that we were noticing in some of the media coverage repeatedly was just a remarkable amount of surgeries that some of these athletes have gone through to beat, you know, especially those that are in their thirties or so, and, you know, seven knee surgeries. And then I think it speaks couple things. One, one, just the remarkable ability of modern medicine to be able to get athletes who careers would’ve been completely ruined by one of these injuries in the past, and would not have competed again to be back at the top of their game and back at multiple Olympics because of these surgeries. And one of the things that we noticed was many of them were seeking out some specialists in Europe or other parts of the world that some of these top medical professionals, and it dawned on us that actually, while Americans can go and see these, the Olympians can afford or sponsor to go and see these per providers elsewhere, they actually couldn’t provide that same label of service in America.
Josh Archambault:
And there’s a variety of reasons for that. But at the crux of it is if you went, if you’re an internationally trained physician and you want to come to the United States to practice, then you have to repeat your residency. You have to go back to what it would’ve been just after you graduated medical school. And in many cases we’ve heard repeatedly, they’re just not willing to do that for a variety of reasons. And so as we look ahead and look at the physician shortage, this raised a, a barrier and an issue, and there’s a way out of this. There are some states moving forward on it, which we can talk about, but it’s just one of those things that I don’t think most, most average patients really think about, who they can actually see is dictated by whether in where the person was trained.
Joe Selvaggi:
So you, you’re saying if you are the top doctor in the world on a particular surgery and you want to immigrate to the United States along with the attending immigration limitations, perhaps but let’s those aside for a moment you would have to go back to, despite the fact you may have been in the industry 25 years, you’d have to go back and redo your residency as if you had just graduated medical school along with your fellow 25 year olds. And, and do what is, you know, I think it’s been called residency because you essentially reside at the hospital. It’s a pretty intensive low pay retraining for someone who really is a more senior person. So you’re saying all of those doctors would have to start. I won’t say it’s square one, but let’s say not not where they left off in their, in their native country.
Josh Archambault:
That’s right. And so if we think about, you know, America aspiring to be a place of entrepreneurs and innovation, you know, I anecdotally have heard of stories of top of their field surgeons or others living in the EA for example, which they pioneer a certain kind of procedure, but I can’t come, can’t come to Boston, can’t come to New York kind, come to LA, can’t come to Kansas city, can’t come to a rural community to perform that surgery because they would have to go through that. And so I think, you know, there’s many layers to this issue that you mentioned immigration, but I think it comes down to, at the end of the day, is America wanting to be a welcoming land to this innovation, to experts in the medical field. You know, we, we look forward at the demographics in this country, especially for physicians, about 40% of physicians are due to retire by 2030.
Josh Archambault:
And so we’re just outta pure necessity. This is an issue that we need to talk about how many people are going to medical school, how many residency slots are, how, how do we fund those residency slots? Do we have enough providers in rural communities? Do we have enough of them in, under, in underserved urban communities, which is a, a major issue, but getting at just the cutting edge technology and, and medical services that don’t do emerge, do we want those entrepreneurs to feel incentivized and have a clear pathway to be able to come to the United States and practice, or even just come and teach practice here for a couple years to teach some of our medical doctors or surgeons or others to provide that. And right now there is a barrier in the way and states can do it. And what was very interesting about this as we’ve dug into this issue, and we’re not alone, Jeff Dr.
Josh Archambault:
Jeffer, who is the former Dean of Harvard medical school has dug into this as well. Is that in a lot of conversations there doesn’t actually seem to be a reason why that this requirement is on the books. It primarily is just what we’ve always done it this way. And so that really raises questions about, well, that, that doesn’t, if there’s not an actual reason for why this barriers in place, these people have already done residencies in their home country. So why would we require them to repeat it? And it’s a relatively simple change policy change, but of course the devils and the details of what, what countries are, are we allowing individuals to come? Where do we think medical programs are quote unquote equivalent going forward. But beyond those sorts of details, the actual simple concept just let’s make sure that they, they’re not taking a huge hit financially and having to live at the hospital doing 60, 70, 80 hour weeks, when really these are the folks that have 25, 30 years experience, and we wanna make sure that they have that clear pathway here.
Joe Selvaggi:
Sure. I think you, you point out a bunch of very good points in, in your remarks. I will say I don’t wanna sound like a cynic, but one of the reasons I think no one’s advocating for foreign doctors causes is they don’t vote. So they’re not here to advocate on their own behalf, but you point out to, if there’s no reason to change this, in other words, we’ve always done it this way. Why, you know, there’s no impetus to, to change your paper, your, your piece also points to the fact that there’s a projected shortage. You estimate of a, a, a shortage of physicians of 120,000 physicians by 2030. You made some reference to in your last remark to the demographics. We all know about the baby boomers retiring rate of, I think it’s a, the silver tsunami as they call it a rate of 10,000 people every day are retiring. Some of those retirees are, are doctors. So they’re going, you know, those baby boomer doctors are also retiring and will also need doctors themselves. You mentioned 40% of American physicians will be, will be retiring in that time. So why why doesn’t this make more sense? Why in a sense, looking at these inevitable demographics, why wouldn’t this be enough to really stimulate a a force for change?
Josh Archambault:
Well, I, I think we’re optimistic there, there are some states debating this as we speak Arizona, Missouri, Wisconsin, there’s bills filed there, moving on this exact issue. And I think it’s only going to grow, but let let’s peel back the onion a little bit. I think there’s a couple confounding issues that are making this worse, not only the demographics, but, you know, if you step back and say, do, do we have enough doctors or medical students coming through the pipeline to replace those that are gonna retire the answers? No we simply don’t. I, and so there is a debate to be had, and we’ve had this in Massachusetts over the years of do we have enough medical schools? Do we have enough entities training, the next generation of physicians and projections that I’ve seen from multiple organizations to simple answers? No, we do not have enough.
Josh Archambault:
We do not have enough individuals who are going into medicine able to replace this, but then the secondary issue becomes, do we actually have enough residency slots? Because that is in all 50 states for physicians and a requirement to be licensed, they have to go through the residency slot. Third answer is no, we don’t have enough residency slots. And so while we’re not graduating enough for those that we are graduating, there are still thousands of them every single year year that don’t get matched in a residency slot. Well, if you don’t get a residency slot, then you’re not able to get licensed in practice. So we’re losing them, we’re pay. They are. And we are investing all of this money to train them. And yet we do not have enough residency slots for them to go to a lot of those individuals. If they don’t get matched, maybe the second time around the second year, they will leave medicine.
Josh Archambault:
They won’t take any job in the field and they’ll go do something else. And what a loss for us as a country, what a loss for patients when access is such such an issue, then you layer onto that, that you, there is a pathway for internationally trained physicians. Once they come outta school to come, if they haven’t done a residency slot at home, they’re gonna have to apply for one of these residency slot where we do not have enough to begin with and they’re in competition. So then we end up at the, that kinda last stop of this discussion, which is what the piece is about, which is for an individual who’s already done. Let’s just say in the UK or in Canada has already completed the residency. We’re now putting them into the pool to compete for not enough slots. And it really is head scratching.
Josh Archambault:
When you start think about the way that the system has been set up. And I think that’s the crux of so many issues that we have in healthcare. There was not an original design to end up where we are now. It just evolved into what it is. And so we at times need to stop and pause and think about, okay, we’re probably not going to start from scratch in many instances here, but we can adjust and make sure that there are pathways that are common sense that are meet the needs of patient, meet the needs of physicians. And this is one of them to say that if an individual has actually already done a residency, we’re not gonna throw them into this quagmire that we have already of not having enough slots and there’s are reforms needed in Medicare. That has to do with medic with residency slots, there’s reforms needed for medical schools. Like those are whole other conversations that need to be had in this country. But at minimum, we can start with the low hanging fruit. I think you’re going to see a growing effort and focus on this because just outta pure necessity of, we need to find more sources of highly qualified providers to be able to come in to.
Joe Selvaggi:
So me to unpack what you’ve just described, you say, okay, look, we need more doctors we’ve established that, right. Particularly going forward. So we have kids going into undergrad at bio majors, premeds. We got plenty of those going in. Then they go into medical school, I suppose. They’re, you know, that funnel gets a little narrower at that point. Then they leave medical school and they need to enter one of these precious residency is, and I think your paper mentions something like 2200 medical students don’t find a, a, a program. So this seems like the limiting constraint here in the, in the process. So some who don’t go into D don’t get their residency go become, I don’t know what, what they become perhaps. I don’t know. But they they don’t become doctor. And so ultimately at the end of the pipeline, we have American born doctors.
Joe Selvaggi:
What you’re saying is if we could do some meaningful, intelligent reform on allowing international doctors to move here, practice here, and in a sense avoid needing to go back to your residency. Not only does it provide a, a poll and other words, they, they don’t have to forego income and time and become a resident again. So we have that pull, but also they’re not, they’re not crowding out American born medical students who also are competing for those residencies. In other words, it’s, it’s, win-win the doctors who are already in the pipeline, the, it, they’re not competing with these international doctors. And those of us who need here, who don’t wanna wait a long time in a waiting room have more doctors to choose from. Am I summarizing your, your points there?
Josh Archambault:
Yeah, it’s absolutely true. And, and just to be very clear, I mean, they could be American born, or they could be international students who come to American medical
Joe Selvaggi:
School. Yes. I, I didn’t mean to mean, I’m not sure, sure. I’d be native. I just, yeah,
Josh Archambault:
No, absolutely. And so it’s just, you know, medical graduates of medical institutions and, and, and what’s interesting is you have seen a number of in the Caribbean in particular, there are a couple institutions who are actually drawing quite a fewer down to the Caribbean to be trained who have very good relationships with trying to place in residency slots when they, those Americans are ready to come back to the United States. And so you’re seeing these individuals and to what, what what’s interesting is like, there are more people who want to go to med school than are able to go. So there’s actually the filtering. There’s been lots of questions about whether the narrowing is actually a beneficial thing. Are, are those not getting into medical school actually less qualified? And I’ve seen research saying, no, these are individuals that if there were slots, they would be just as good medical providers, if there were just more slots in medical school to begin with.
Josh Archambault:
So yeah, there’s certainly an issue there. I, I think the other thing that we see emerge in this debate is, well, where are these individuals going to go? Are they going to settle in urban areas or they’re going to settle in rural areas. And some of the states that are debating this reform do say that we, you can, we’re going to, you can skip the residency slot. If you go into one of the critical access that areas and you need to live there. And anecdotally what’s very interesting is on the loan repayment side, in rural American, in particular, where this is probably the most acute in some communities there’s been loan repayment programs trying to get medical students to come out, to serve well, in essence, a lot of them will come get their loan forgiven and then move somewhere else. But for a lot of these internationally trained physicians, they’ll come, they’ll bring their families, they’ll settle in the community and they’ll become deeply part of that community.
Josh Archambault:
And so that’s why you, we’re seeing a lot of rural hospitals and others excited about this sort of reform to say, Hey, we’re not just looking for somebody to come and serve for two to three years, five years, but we want somebody to come here and live here 20 or 30 years. And so while this is and I don’t wanna oversell it, this is not a silver bullet reform to the, the physician shortage issue, but it is certainly a tool in the toolbox. It seems to be very common sense, the benefits, not only the physician in their family, the hospital patients in particular. And I just think we need to make sure that we pause and how policy makers be aware of this, that with a relatively easy change, they can create this pathway for these physicians to come if they would like to.
Joe Selvaggi:
So you’re saying these programs now work deliberately to encourage or entice doctors away from, let’s say urban areas like a Boston towards more rural areas, let’s say Western part of our own state, right. Here in Massachusetts it’s probably under doctored and I would hazard guess at Boston has more doctors per square mile than any place on earth. So so you’re saying what rural communities typically do is perhaps have some loan forgiveness program to, to encourage a doctor out. What a international program I do is go directly to the international doctrine and say, if you move here you know, we, we will be supportive. And what you’re saying that even more so than the loan repayment is a stickier relationship. The international doctor who comes over and moves his family here is more likely to stay in that rural community than the counterpart from a, a us medical school, once his loans repaid, he may pack up and go back to Boston.
Josh Archambault:
Yeah. That, that, and I, haven’t seen a lots of research done on that. That’s more anecdotal from talking to people who are you know, trying to attract providers. And I, I think it doesn’t just apply to physician. I think it applies to nurse practitioners and nurses and others because you know, the shortage of medical high quality medical providers is extremely acute at this moment. Not just because of COVID, but because of a lot more mobility, I mean, it, some future episode, Joe, we can talk about the nurse shortage issue that is out there and the amount of hospitals and others that are using traveling nurses, individuals who only come in for three months or six months, and then move on. I mean, having a culture of care at the highest quality when you have your staff turning over every three to six months of individuals moving, not to say that these are not good providers, but just difficult when you’re having new personalities come in, having to, to learn new systems.
Josh Archambault:
So if you’re able to get providers, whether it’s a physician, not way down to a nurse, who’s there and is living in the community and not going to move on in three to six months, that is by far the preference going forward. And we’re having an unprecedented amount of disruption happen in our, a lot of medical settings, both urban and rural. And so we have to look at some of these alternative ways to make sure that individuals that wanna come and if even 50% of them settle down in their community and become really valuable parts of that community, that’s a huge win. And, you know, I think the last thing I would just say here, Joe, about the numbers of what we’re talking about is this has been a little bit of a chicken and an egg debate of trying to understand will a lot more physicians come.
Josh Archambault:
If they know that they have to go through the residency slots there is a visa program that allows individuals to come currently right now and not all of those visa slots are taken every year. And the speculation for years has been beats because of this barrier. And so I think interestingly, if a few states pass this, we’re gonna find out in the next five years or so, whether that is in fact, the primary area for these trained physicians to come, or whether it’s other issues they don’t know about the opportunity. They’re not being recruited. Maybe it’s the systems are just different between some of these countries, but when you’re talking about Israel, Australia, the UK, Canada, Ireland, but these systems are close enough. In many people, we have seen individuals come into the country out of these countries and do a fellowship, be here for 10 years and maybe go back home due to family reasons. It, it is not that big of a stretch to see that you would see more flow back and forth of physicians coming and actually becoming and settling down.
Joe Selvaggi:
Well, I like to say often when we’re talking about topics here on hub long, I say our audience are not just they’re not into just merely our ideas or think tank, but we’re also a do tank. You, as you say, there’s many layers to this question but medical staff stability. But to in the wake of the disruption of COVID is something that benefits all of us. Of course, the doctors and the nurses wanna be stable. The patients themselves wanna see the same familiar face when they are, when they’re sick. What can listeners and I, I really wanna address more of the state level. Of course immigration can be more of a national issue, but let’s address what we could do as a state. If policy makers are listening to this show and this strikes a chord with them, what, what could we do?
Josh Archambault:
Yeah, I think there’s probably two pathways here. You know, first is the legislature of the general court, certainly could pass a law model of one of the other bills that have been filed around the country that creates an explicit pathway. And those bills typically have done a few things. The one, the first one is they’ve actually named a number of countries. And to say, we are gonna have some sort of reciprocity here that if you have attended a medical school, and there is entities international entities who certify these schools. And so if you attend one of these schools in one of these countries that are recognized, then if you would like to come and practice in the United States, you still need to meet every other requirement that the board of licensure has, but you do not need to repeat your, the residency as we’ve been speaking about that at least brings clarity that allows medical institutions, hospitals, to know that they can go out and recruit at these international program and say, or other facilities and say, you know, we really would like to have you come and practice at our hospital because of the high quality work that you are doing and let people know here’s the process to do that.
Josh Archambault:
You no longer have this multi-year barrier in place. So it’s that simple. I do think that in many cases, including Massachusetts, the boards themselves could be a lot more explicit. I think this is an education gap, more than anything. It’s just to say, this is something that you can do to set up a process in which individuals to say, here are the criteria that we are looking for. You need to be in good standing back home. You need to have gone to one of these schools. You need to have not had major liability issues in the last few you years going forward, we need to see your records. We need to see how you did in school. It, you completed school, all of those kind of basic things that we would want to double check before somebody comes, but it’s often the gray area here that leads to, I think, hesitation for people going forward so that states could very easily pass a law. Or I think the boards could really clearly articulate out to say, this is the pathway that we’re going to have going forward, and we’re gonna welcome open the door to these individuals that wanna come practice.
Joe Selvaggi:
But a wonderfully interesting experiment will be if we can get this all going. I think to myself as a, as a city guy myself we see a lot of immigrants all the time. Usually the urban center is where immigrants start. Certainly my grandparents, that’s how they went. I can imagine seeding our rural communities with very well educated people from other places. It may, may change our our culture, right? We, the people pillars are our community are our, our medical professionals coming from elsewhere. May, may change our sort of a notion of what people from other places look like are like it may, I think have a very beneficial effect on just our, our our view of the world. If, if the person curing your kid or your mom is from somewhere else it may have, have a, take a different look on, on the rest of the world. I’m, I’m just offering that as an aside, as a, as a, a thoughtful idea. This has been very informative. Is there anybody taking lead up on our state house in our state house on beacon hill, someone a Crusader for, for the cause of international medical doctors. I met asking you this, not knowing if you do have an answer, I I’ll just throw that out there
Josh Archambault:
To date. There is not I think that this is an open opportunity for the conversation to start in Massachusetts.
Joe Selvaggi:
Oh, good. All right, we’ll leave it there then, then thank you very much, Josh. That it was a great great article in, in Forbes. Congratulations on getting it in there and thanks for helping make this, you know, this somewhat our Keene piece of information more familiar to our listeners. I, I think this could not gonna solve the problem, but we, we are moving towards finding a solution. So thank you very much. Thank you.
Joe Selvaggi:
This has been another episode of Hubwonk, a podcast of Pioneer Institute. If you enjoyed today’s episode, there are several ways to support the show. It would be easier for you and better for us. If you subscribe to Hubwonk on your iTunes podcast, catcher, if you’d like to help make it easier for others to find Hubwonk, it would be great if you offer a five-star rating or a favorable review, we’re always grateful. If you share Hubwonk with friends, if you have ideas or suggestions or comments for me about our episodes, you’re welcome to email me at Hubwonk@pioneerinstitute.org. Please join me next week for a new episode of Hubwonk.
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Dinesh Wadhwani Clears the Air with Light Technology
/in Economic Opportunity, Featured, JobMakers /by Editorial StaffThis week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Dinesh Wadhwani, founder and CEO of ThinkLite, LLC in Natick, Massachusetts, and immigrant from Ghana. His journey began when his grandfather was forced to flee India, and built a business in Ghana that paved the way for the generations to come. When Dinesh moved to the United States in 2008 as a student at Babson College, he was determined to build a life and a business here in the U.S. While he was studying entrepreneurship, he became one: in just a few short years, his technology-based life science solutions business expanded across the globe and evolved into a life-saving enterprise, purifying the air in hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic, as you’ll learn in this week’s JobMakers.
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Denzil Mohammed:
I’m Denzil Mohammed, and this is Jobmakers,
Denzil Mohammed:
Migration stories. Aren’t always simple. Families might have moved to different countries in different generations for different reasons. However, it is that entrepreneurial spirit of leaving everything behind taking a risk and working for better in a new land that not only keeps them going, but drives innovation and resourcefulness for Dinesh Wadhwani, founder and CEO of ThinkLite LLC in Natick, Massachusetts, immigrant from Ghana, that journey began with his grandfather who was forced to flee India for another British colony. And despite having to work all alone from nothing, he was able to build a business in Ghana and pave the way for the generations to come. When Danes moved to the United States in 2008, as a student at Babson College, the mandate from his father was clear, build a life and a business in the US and not returning to Ghana. And that’s just what Dinesh did. Even while he was studying entrepreneurship. He became an entrepreneur in just a few short years. His technology-based life science solutions business expanded across the globe and evolved into a life saving enterprise, purifying the air in hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic. As you’;; learn in this week’s Jobmakers.
Denzil Mohammed:
Dinesh Wadhwani, founding CEO of ThinkLite, welcome to Jobmakers. How are you?
Dinesh Wadhwani:
I’m very well. Thank you, Danzil. Thank you for having me here today. I appreciate it.
Denzil Mohammed:
So give us a 30-second pitch about your business. What is ThinkLite all about?
Dinesh Wadhwani:
So ThinkLite is a technology company based out of the Boston area here in Massachusetts. We specialize in high-end technologies, specializing in facilities, we started off in the energy space, which, which has grown into a, a large division and a company that there’s high-end efficiency lining for commercial applications. We, we have a division that does grow lighting for agriculture and poultry optimization. And most importantly, which has comes down to stage the last few years, we have an air division that specializes in very tiny particulate monitoring of viral loads in the air, in the healthcare space. And as you can imagine, that has kind across boundaries to go well beyond healthcare for the last few years. So that’s what we do as a company.
Denzil Mohammed:
So apart from the obvious, which is the pandemic and your most recent foray into the airspace why is your business important in today’s world?
Dinesh Wadhwani:
Our ethos really is we, I think like we call ourselves technologists, we love technology. We believe technology is gonna save our world and we love to build things that create value in a very impactful way. That’s really who we are and what we are all about. And, and our supply chain extends from designing stuff in Boston to Germany, where we do a lot of engineering and to Asia, where we do a lot of the semiconductor manufacturing and we work very closely with Samsung as well. And so South Korea. So, so if you think about it, given the talent that we are fortunate to have cultivated over the years and our interest and what we believe in we have always felt that we want to build products and services and bring it to the world in a very innovative but effective way that can add a value for sustainability, for wellbeing and for challenging the wasteful practices of, you know, of our current planet.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
And we started there with, you know, bringing to market, you know, the first of its kind ultra efficient, we were 30 to 50% more efficient than traditional and about 90% more efficient than your traditional fluorescent fly. And then that evolved into smart building and smart lighting, because that was kind of where the opportunity became now that you had efficient lighting. What else can you do if you made them smart and turn them on and off and dim them, you could further optimize it. And then that kind of pivoted into how can we use everything we know about lighting and smart buildings to add value beyond it, energy savings. And this kind happened around 2015, where we were studying together in the executive team. And I, and we said, if you think about it, it’s kind of quite an quite an amazing phenomenon that you have lights almost every feet in the building with a fixture electricity come up through it. It gotta do more than just save you money. And that’s when we said, how can we apply everything we know about small building, smart building automation, mind manipulating spectrums of light and creating different waves of light and marrying that with other chemical compositions to add value in a different way. And, and that’s how we got into our agricultural lighting. We got into poultry lighting and then along the same concepts, and around the same time we got into how we could use light spectrum to do this infection as well.
Denzil Mohammed:
So Dinesh, you’re from Ghana originally grew up speaking English and your grandparents were from India. Is that right?
Dinesh Wadhwani:
That’s correct. Yes.
Denzil Mohammed:
So this is a very fascinating, but of also a very common story of migration, not only from India, but from other countries, but take us back and tell us exactly what happened, how and why.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
Sure. My granddad was actually one of seven brothers and he was our original hometown is a state called Sen in the North Western part of India. And during the 1940s and the time of colonization when India was being divided into India and Pakistan, a lot of people in the middle kinda lost their homes. Cause you know, what was considered a general area was it’s now being divided politically into different countries. So my granddad and his and his brothers actually went to hide, you know, British votes to prevent being a prisoner of war or going to fight. And these votes were trading with other British colonies at that time. And, and that’s literally how my, my granddad ended up in Ghana, Western Africa, which at that time was a, was a British colony as well. And many of his brothers, you know, ended up in Hong Kong.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
So today, you know, fast forward, you know, 60, 70 years, we have a lot of family there and some came to the us, but it was a, it was a common practice of those who didn’t wanna be part of the political situation and wanted to leave would go to the other colonies that you know, was, was, was ruling the countries at that at those times. So my granddad went there and, and, you know, he, he made a living for himself. He, he adapted, he was an entrepreneur and raised a family there. And that’s when my dad was born and that’s when my brother myself and my younger sister were born. And that became home.
Denzil Mohammed:
That’s really fascinating. But again, as you said, it, it’s, it’s not an uncommon story. And just to be clear, your, your grandfather’s options were really slim. It was either fighting a war convert to Islam or escape. Right.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
Right. And, and many would actually seek refuge in India. And, and many people did that, where they would go, but start from scratch. Right. They, they didn’t have a home state. They lost all your property. They lost all your jobs. They lost all their land and just have a start from scratch.
Denzil Mohammed:
And you, obviously, you we’re able to straddle to very different, I would say kinds of cultures Western Africa, Indian subcontinent. So how is your experience of being an immigrant from another country, you know, has that impacted your business style or, or the kinds of goals you set for yourself?
Dinesh Wadhwani:
Yeah, definitely. I, and I think most, most immigrants who come to the us for better opportunities or for a better, better life can probably relate to this is there’s so many things over here in the us that many people take for granted and, and growing up, we were not exposed to many of these facility or still infrastructure stuff like internet. I remember growing up, there were times where Ghana during the nineties had something called load shedding, where there was not enough lecture study on the grid. So they would publish in the newspaper that for this week from 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM, you’re not gonna have electricity. Right. So I remember when my brother and I would come home and we had to finish all our homework before it gets dark. Cause when it gets dark, you there’s nothing much you can do with a candle, go to bed.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
Right? Little things like this, where we, we grew up of being the norm and that’s the life we need. And when we, when I came to the us you realized how much more advanced the infrastructure is. And, and you realize how much of an opportunity this is to be able to have faster internet, to be able to have good roads or infrastructure, to move around, to meet people. And, and to me, there is so much here to be grateful of that we didn’t have growing up. And that changes your perspective, you know, and, and, you know, most immigrants status that, you know, the United States is a lot of opportunity because there is a good infrastructure that creates enough opportunity for you, you to come from nothing. Right. I remember when I came here, I didn’t know anybody. And it’s not, it’s less about who, you know, specifically, which how it works back home in Ghana too.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
You could, you could now have a lot of information and have a lot of skills, but it comes down to, you know, who, you know, for the most part, while that is important over here, of course, you know, this so many cases we see every single day where someone would come far away from, from country knowing no, no one, but worked really hard. Worked honestly worked in to develop certain skills and become successful. And I think it’s just very well balanced society that we have in the us that creates a platform for doing that. So it makes me always grateful what we have here. Most countries don’t have that. And, and it changes your attitude. You wake up every morning and you say, you gotta seize. This opportunity
Denzil Mohammed:
Makes you more humble, more grateful, more appreciative that that’s fascinating to,
Dinesh Wadhwani:
But it does,
Denzil Mohammed:
You know, 12 hours a day. You don’t have electricity that, isn’t that just crazy to think about now. Yeah. So you came to the us in 2008 as a student on your student visa, you went to Babson cause you already spoke English, but adapting to the US culture is always a challenge and an experience for everyone.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
So my dad would say through my entire high school and when I was starting, when I wanted, where I want to go to school, what I wanna study, he would say, Hey, listen, you have a good plan B if things don’t work out, you know, you can always come back to Ghana and we can either you work in the family business, or, you know, we, we are Old Timers here and we can find some opportunities for you, but frankly go through the United States, make a better life for yourself and don’t come back. Right. And, and that was the message that, you know, he, he gave me and my brother when, when we came here to study. And, you know, when I, when I came in Atlanta, Logan app, I remember it was the day before probably orientation and I land. And, and I still remember this the day till today is like, okay, here’s where I gotta make my life. Right. My goal is to learn, obviously, you know, make new relationships and meet new people, but it’s really gonna make a living for myself. And the goal is to make the family proud and take advantage of, you know, my education and what I’m coming here to do of what they have sent me here to do and, and not go back.
Denzil Mohammed:
So you found it ThinkLite in 2009, in just a few years, you were in 14 different countries. Like that must have been a rollercoaster.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
It was. And, I would say that that almost every single connection of that in came from the Babson community, which is quite incredible. It’s very international as you probably know, and a lot of friends and I was fortunate enough to be on the scholarship program on my back. So I had the opportunity to meet with the trustees who also were from all over the world and they would be intrigued with and, and what would be doing. And it was, it was quite a very supportive, you know, environment where I remember doing classes where I would tell the professor, I got a over the next three weeks because we have these, you know, big projects or big deals that I think I have to be there for. And the professor would say, keep a diary of it and I’ll accept it as thesis, you know very real and, and, and, and very quickly given the small community was many of the professors, the Dean, the president at that time were following ThinkLite very closely.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
And today I’m so ever grateful to them because of the support that I received. And they would be making introductions all the time and the exposure we got, you know, within the us, of course, but even internationally was we got to seize the opportunity. So the next thing I know, they would say, this is incredible technology and you are spending a lot of money for businesses and make more of impact in the US, you know, can you come and do it, you know, in the United Kingdom, can you come and do it in Thailand? Can you come and do it in Singapore? And I was like, absolutely. And they would say, and, you know, they, they would, they would literally treat, treat it like a real business and they would say, okay, great. You have a team that can come over and train people. And I would say, yes, let’s go. And there was, I would forget many times that I’m still still in college, you know, and I have to attend class and I would say, I’ll come back and catch up. And, and I would go, so it was throughout, you know, from 2010, all the way up to 2015 there was a lot of expansion internationally where we were building a foundation in those countries where we had large distributors and, and we were making all impacts without technologies over there, which fostered growth in the US and vice versa too.
Denzil Mohammed:
You’re not quite doing exactly what you did at the beginning. So, so tell us how the pandemic impacted your business.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
Sure. So, you know, around 2015, we made a conscious decision of how can we leverage our technology, our experience, our relationships, and the marketplace to do more than just save energy, right. Like I mentioned before, and I think the single most important change that I personally experienced and at the company was we start an, an initiative to say each time we would close a, a big project and go do a lighting project for them. I would like to speak to the head of facilities or the head of our operations myself personally, and say, can you please tell me a little bit more about the other problems you’re facing when you’re challenging in your workplace or your facility? One of the biggest things that really changed the trajectory of our company was this initiative to ask customers what else we can do for them.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
And that’s why we learned a lot more. We learned more about a lot more opportunities that we can address, whether it was, they have good lighting, but it wasn’t smart enough, or they had good lighting, but they needed to have a unique spectrum of light to increase their yield of produce, or when talking to hospitals, which is most, most relevant. You know, in this day and ages, we were working with Boston children’s hospital back in 2017. And, you know, we learned from the facilities, people that they, this number one challenge was hospital acquired infection to via the air. And this is not something that’s unique to any particular hospital. This is something that exists forever, right? And if you think about it, when people come to the hospital, well, you’re sick. You know, dear coughing, you’re spreading terms of diseases. And simultaneously you have people there who are undergoing surgery, or who have compromised immune systems who are unwell.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
And these two groups of people are on the same roof, sharing the same air. It’s quite a recipe for disaster. And, and unfortunately there’s no better way, right? I mean, that’s just the nature of, of, of how the facilities and what happens all the time, which really caught my heart was the number one cause of debt in our country was secondhand transmission of germs in these hospitals. And, and, and I’m discussing that saying, we are replacing fixtures every three feet. They’re gonna be a better weight. And that’s when the idea of producing a light fixture that can also purify the air at the same time was born. And that evolved into less leverage of technology to now monitor it and make it smart. So we even know how bad the air is to start with, and we can always keep it that way. And then it evolved into let’s make connected to the HVAC system.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
So it could be even smarter and involved into, you know, less external alone units. Here. We have found a software, we built an entire ecosystem of technology that could monitor the air, tell you if there’s a viral load in the air light fixtures that would seamlessly clean the air free of these viral particles. And the whole world was, you know, coming to a standstill because of an airborne virus. And it, it, it took COVID 19 or global pandemic for people to realize that you don’t need to be in a hospital to, to share air with someone to get disease from that that’s when, for the first time we learned that what we thought was a niche in the healthcare world is now something that is applicable everywhere else. And, and that’s how the pandemic really changed our ThinkLite air division. And next thing we know our marketplace just, you know, expanded by infinite-fold really of the addressable market.
Denzil Mohammed:
Oh, wow. Dinesh. That’s incredible. So finally, Dinesh, as an immigrant to the us, you know, your grandparent was, was taken in by Ghana and you were taken in by the us and this country has allowed you, your family and your business to thrive. How do you feel about the United States of America as, as your adopted homeland?
Dinesh Wadhwani:
There’s a very admirable amount of respect in this country for people who work hard for people who are trying to make a positive impact. And, you know, whoever you share with, in my experience, what you’re trying or what our business is about they’ll say, Hey, talk to this person. Or, you know, have you thought of that? And, this, this celebration of solving problems in this country, I feel this country as a whole really promotes entrepreneurship and promotes originality. It promotes, trying to just do good. And by doing good, trying to create good value for people, very few people can say that about the experience going to any other country really, and, and being embraced and being part of the community to say, Hey, we are here creating, creating impact, creating jobs for the people in the country is really, it is really a nice, a nice feeling. So I’m, I’m always gonna be grateful to this country for that.
Denzil Mohammed:
I think one of the things that makes the United States extra special is that it celebrates entrepreneurship and innovation no matter where you come from
Dinesh Wadhwani:
That’s right.
Denzil Mohammed:
You know, it’s the idea, it’s the hard work and it’s the value that creates it. And I hope that you, and ThinkLite are able to continue creating value and having a positive impact and purifying our air. Please, we need that a lot. Absolutely. We will continue doing our best to educate people on, on this topic. That is, that is so important and affects their bottom line, right?
Dinesh Wadhwani:
Yes, that’s right. And thank you. And it’s a joy to see the impact that the immigrant learning center does in empowering, you know, whether it’s by your language, by your life skills, then it’s, it’s always been close to my heart. So it’s, I, I admire that. And it’s such an important thing that we need to have for people who come here with, you know, with, with a twinkle in the eye and for opportunity and giving them these skills and giving them these tools to, to help them fulfill their dreams is something that’s close to my heart. So, so thank you for that.
Denzil Mohammed:
That’s very nice for you to say, Dinesh, thank you so much, Dinesh Wadhwani, founder and CEO of ThinkLite. Thank you for joining us on JobMakers.
Dinesh Wadhwani:
Thank you, Denzil true pleasure.
Denzil Mohammed:
Job makers is a weekly podcast about immigrant entrepreneurship and contribution produced by pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston and the Immigrant Learning Center in Malden, Massachusetts, a not for profit. That gives immigrants a voice. Thanks for joining us for today’s incredible story of immigrant entrepreneurship, but comments, questions, or know someone we should talk to email Denzil that’s D E N Z I L @ Jobmakers.podcast.org. I’m Denzil Muhammad. See you next Thursday at noon for another job makers.
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