APPENDIX M: INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT – MATT POZEL

Valerie: Cool. So, go ahead and start off by telling me your name and how long you've been working here.

Matt Pozel: My name is Matt Pozel and I've been with the foundation for 21 years this year.

V: Yeah, congratulations on that. That's pretty neat.

M: Sure. Yeah. No. Been a year at a time, you know.

[Laughter]

00:18 V: So, I mean 21 years is obviously quite a career. Tell me a little bit about the work that you do here now either for the editorial team or other departments that you work with in tandem.

00:31 M: Well, I sort of landed in this I mean I work on a day-to-day basis on some kind of internal kind of communications for the foundation. The daily updates to a platform called Courtyard, which people can contribute to and then we can push things out. Also, some of the working with Talent & Culture on some of the engagement opportunities for associates, whether they go out in the field with Lunch and Learn trips and then come back and talk about them, or other gatherings we have to share ideas. That's sort of my internal communications role.

01:18 M: To support programs and then more recently to support editorial needs, I work on stories writing stories, producing stories, video. So, those are my two big — you know I came to the foundation as a writer. That's the way I was used to telling stories. That's the way I was the most comfortable. You know, translating stories. I learned here that the Kauffman way of telling stories is more through video, and so, I've gotten more

comfortable with that as the years have gone by. I think my favorite is sort of a little bit of both, you know. So...

V: Mhmm.

02:02 V: Cool. Yeah. I know, I mean. I've always known that you work pretty closely with Matt Long, but as I've worked here I've seen a little bit more of what you do on Courtyard and all of that. So, it's interesting to hear from everyone how their roles have changed just in the last few years as the editorial team has really become an editorial team.

02:21 M: Sure. Yeah. I think. Yeah I mean we've gone through a lot of different versions of the department structure, and I think I've had a chance to contribute to that from time to time. I mean I've always seen myself, whether it's in this role or throughout my career, is just to be. I mean I've never been at the level where I can make I think big decisions,

but I've always wanted to be able to feed into those. And I've been pretty...I haven't held back in expressing my thoughts about that. I feel like that's what I'm here to do. I'm here to be me. I'm hired to be me. But then, once those decisions are made then I feel like I want to be a good soldier and carry them out. And contribute the best way I can and give others room to contribute. Because what I appreciate about my job through the years has been the ability to express myself. Express myself creatively to express myself in ways that coincide with my personal values and beliefs. I feel like through the years I've been lucky to work for organizations that I believe in their mission and the way they're...what they're trying to accomplish.

03:52 M: I feel like I have a, from the first time I discovered I had an ability to write something and reach people was like a magic moment. But then it was also that moment to be cognizant of I can influence people. I can play off of people's emotions. I can create something that is legitimate or illegitimate, and I need to be careful about how I apply that.

V: Sure.

04:22 V: Well, in talking about expression, just in your own words can you kind of give me an overview of what this new editorial approach is for you and for the team?

04:33 M: You know I think it'll give us some structure, I hope. I don't think we're there yet. I think it's been a little bit of back and forth. A little bit of two steps forward and one step back, or one step forward and two steps back in some cases. I haven't been shy about expressing where I think it's.... the analogy that I've been using is this idea that we're working on the plumbing, and I want to turn the faucets on. I want to put water through the pipes and see where it's leaking and see where it's running smoothly. I feel like the reins are still on us a bit as we're trying to figure out process. I'm not — I mean I understand structure. I understand process and the need for it, but I guess I'm not as tolerant of it.

05:35 M: I'm anxious to...I'm more of a plan for it, do it, figure out what you could've done better. Do it is the second part of that process. So, I want to get to the "do it" part. I think until we do that, we can't give a fair analysis of whether it's working.

V: Sure.

06:07 M: I feel like it's still a work in progress. I'm not sure...it doesn't feel finely tuned right now. I think from a practical standpoint we're spending still way too much time on like the weekly getting the weekly email out. I think I would like to see that transition to producing content and then using the email as another platform to say, 'Oh this would be good to present through the email.' Just like we do on social media channels, instead of letting the newsletter or letting the email sort of lead the way.

V: Yeah. Yeah.

06:52 V: I've definitely heard that from others, too. I think that that will become more clear as we kind of do work through that and understand what the constraints are around us time-wise and what are the expectations of others in the foundation. Like, is that newsletter really effective or other things we can be spending our time on.

07:13 M: And my experience comes from, too, I did the newsletter kind of by myself.

Not by myself, but I was chiefly responsible for doing it every week. So, I understood the weekly grind of it. And I brought people in at different times in the process. But it was my assignment to do it, and so I would try to just let everybody do their work. Let everybody post what they were posting. Present what they were presenting, and then at some point during the week, I would think, 'OK. This is the snapshot of the foundation that we want.' And then I would produce three...I started with the three items, which was actually a take-off of the "Three Things Sketchbook" from years ago. There was going to be three items and then I would send it around for approval.

08:06 M: So, it was less. I mean it was more on me. It was less labor-intensive

throughout the foundation or throughout the department, I should say. You know, how much time and effort was put into it. People still had their say on what went in and what didn't go in and how it was presented. But it was way less of a team effort, but it was way less of a team chore, too.

V: Sure. Sure.

08:39 V: I'm curious then, I mean, obviously you've been working through different variations of what this team is for a long time. Kind of when were you brought into the conversations around Atlantic 57? Because I think that engagement has been going on since like last May.

08:58 M: Yeah, I mean I feel like I was...I mean I heard parts of it. And, part of it, too, was at one point there was a thing called the digital team, which was a precursor I guess to the editorial team, and I wasn't a part of that either. I think Matt and I were sort of separate from that. I've got no opinion about that. It's Keith call how that, what he needed from those meetings. I'm sort of the fewer meetings I can get into, the better I feel about things.

09:28 M: So, I wasn't missing the fact of contributing to that. I think that might have grown out of that or an offshoot of that. I'm guessing it was something from one of the trips to South by Southwest, and they got exposed to a presentation by the group from Atlantic. I felt like I heard about it rather late in the game, like what exactly they were doing what the expectations were.

V: Sure.

09:58 V: Do you feel like those primary goals of this change have been illustrated now to a better degree? Like what are we hoping to get out of making this change?

10:11 M: I'm not real clear on how we're going to judge whether this is a success or not. I will say I think I am more on board with this team than I am with any consultant. And I just...It's hard to be the person who's been around for 20 years and not be seen as the person that's, 'Oh, this again.' Or, 'We've tried this, and it didn't work.' But I do feel like consultants could learn something from us, or that we could teach consultants something.

When I sit through some of their presentations, I mentioned this to Larry at one point in passing. And he was like, well you know. He agreed, but it was. In his experience, and he's brought consultants in at very high levels. There's been times where he's tried to make points and they weren't heard with him internally. And then you bring somebody in from the outside and there's some kind of magic that happens when you hear it from somebody from the outside, especially the Atlantic.

11:29 M: I'm a huge...I mean the Atlantic, the New Yorker, they're my go-to airport airplane reading things. I really admire the work that they do as journalists. I think I mean and on some level I think it might have been more helpful to say to have us highlight the Atlantic and what it does editorial. The New Yorker and what it does editorial. You know maybe there's some websites that we admire what they do editorially. And bring them in to talk about that instead of hiring whatever version of the Atlantic 57 represents.

12:12 M: Have the conversation less about advising us on how to do our process and more about their thinking about their context for stories and how they think through the life cycle of a story and regenerating a story. And how they've actually done that.

12:45 V: Yeah, so, digging into more concrete content and the thinking that goes into that. Rather than just here's how we're going to run a meeting to talk about those stories.

12:55 M: Yeah because ultimately that's going to fall back on us. It's great that they have an opinion about that but it's still, it's us.

13:08 V: Cool. Well, I kind of want to shift gears to talking about how some of this advising has changed the way that we actually think, whether that's in great strides or small ones. And I know that you had a lot of really solid points when we were just starting to dig into the typologies. So, I wanted to get a sense of how adopting this approach has affected the way we think about audiences in our work. Whether that's an email list or typologies or how we're really thinking about that now.

13:39 M: You know, I think there's always going to be a mix between what the person you're talking to wants to hear and what you have to say. I just think that starts with any normal human conversation and expands out into the wider world of trying to connect with people. I think essentially you're trying to connect with a person in a meaningful way somehow. I guess one of my criteria for consultants is how many words like taxonomy or personas that they throw out. Or typography?

V: Typology

14:35 M: Typology. So, are you talking about types? Is that the word? I'm a word person.

I sort of cringe a little bit. I cringe, frankly, at some of the things that get thrown around the Kauffman Foundation and in philanthropy. I feel like a big part of what our job is to try to translate the big fancy words into words that actually have meaning to people.

15:00 M: So, that's always like a red flag for me. I also feel like in part of those

conversations. I feel like people are just more complicated than you're a skeptic or you're a true believer or you're a thought leader or whatever. I think trying to target a message to this idea that you are wholly a skeptic, so therefore this is the message that you want. I think there's things I'm skeptical about, and then there's things that I feel very confident that I am an expert in as an individual. So, in the course of one article in the Atlantic I think there's things that hit on those different things. Or anything that I'm consuming.

16:01 V: Yeah. I guess that's the beauty of kind of what they define typology as. The word itself is maybe not very helpful, but the thinking that someone can vacillate from sometimes I'm a skeptic and sometimes I really believe in this. Or sometimes I really am looking to collaborate on this idea or making this concept really understood. And so that's where...I guess I've kind of understood thinking about audiences more so. I think we're trying to get to a point where we're thinking about audiences in terms of their values and their interests. But I think we're still a little hazy on what values and interests those audiences maybe hold.

16:44 M: Yeah. And where they tie back to our values and interests. Because you spend a lot of time trying to convert people. Or you can spend a lot of time equipping people who are already on...I mean we have already staked our claim and it's not going to change that we're going to be the true believers in entrepreneurship and education and Kansas City Civic. If that's going to be our point of view, I think trying to keep that context in the equation I think is important, too. Because otherwise, for instance, I think it's great that we can weigh in when the government shuts down with a point of view. Frankly, I'm not sure if the person in any of those audience types where they work themselves down to the Kauffman Foundation.

17:52 M: So, for instance, I'm a fan of the Heinz Foundation in Pittsburgh. The president there came from a communications background. He's a wonderful writer, and he's written some really eloquent presidential notes about things that are happening in the world. I haven't gone to read what Grant says about the government shutdown, even though he may or may not have written an essay about it because I don't have the energy to work my way all the way down to the Heinz Foundation. For something that big, I'm going to the Atlantic or I'm going to The New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. And I feel like where we weigh in with a perspective and what our perspective is just as important as weighing in. Just because...I appreciate when the Atlantic got to the point in our last session where they said, 'What would help you as a writer say get your message across?

What would you want to know from research?'

19:01 M: And when we talked about this idea like what are people searching for? And what are they finding? So, if someone is looking for, I don't know second-act

entrepreneurs. Baby boomers turning into entrepreneurs or retirees or whatever it is. If that search is being conducted and then we find that there is slim picking in that area.

That no one is really addressing that. To me, that seems like something we could really weigh in on. If we search for millennial entrepreneurs, and we find there is an unlimited supply, and people who have captured the audiences we want to capture to a great degree.

I'm not sure we're going to resonate there.

19:59 V: Yeah, it's hard to resonate and to stand out when someone has already fulfilled that need for the audience. Where they've already found an interest in that and gotten the information or the sentiment that they wanted to hear put across. I agree that there is something to be said for weighing in and adding your voice to that conversation, but I think you're right that the pieces we're going to see be really successful are things that are going to be gaps in people's information that they are looking for. That they're saying, 'I need this information.' Or, 'I want to know if there's someone out there like me or has had this experience. And I just can't find it.' ...That's the whole point of understanding

audiences as interests is understanding that they want something. And if we can give it to them, then we'll have a much better mutual relationship than just saying, 'We're going to produce whatever we want and hopefully someone will want it, too.'

M: Yeah.

21:02 M: And again, I would say, it's that mix of what's our. So, I'm about as far away from an entrepreneur as you can get, I think over time I've kind of caught some of that.

What entrepreneurs do. And I know, I think about value proposition a lot and what is the unique thing that the Kauffman Foundation has to bring to the conversation. If we're going to have a roundtable about whatever subject, why would they invite Kauffman?

Why would they want to hear what Kauffman has to say? What do we have to say, and how do we distinguish ourselves so that our point of view on it is maybe has historical context, maybe it has a different point of view? We talk about the lenses we have for entrepreneurship and education. I think that's of value to bring to the overload of information that people are hit with. I think that alone is of value to people, if you can sort of make sense of everything that's being thrown at them. And give them some sort of context or relevance. I think that can be helpful.

22:34 M: I know it is for me.

22:39 V: Yeah. I mean, I think that goes back to how we think about the news and information that we consume. Is it relevant to my every day? Is it giving me some better understanding of the reality that I live? Is it timely? It's great if I see this article about what happened three months ago, that might still give me some understanding. But that's maybe not what I needed right now.

23:00 M: Well, and does it represent special interest, too? And that's something that I think sometimes we don't acknowledge. That we feel we are advancing a point of view.

23:00 M: Well, and does it represent special interest, too? And that's something that I think sometimes we don't acknowledge. That we feel we are advancing a point of view.