Ellington Brown: 0:17

Welcome to Speak Up International with Rita Burke and Elton Brown.

Rita Burke: 0:22

Today we are in National Laboratory. We speak of international. We'll be having our usual conversation with Ryan Downey and, because of his childhood experiences, our guest today says that he learned a lot about self-direction. That he learned a lot about self-direction. Currently, ryan leads a strong youth development program in Atlanta. However, at one point in his life he taught poetry and writing in the public, schools, correctional facilities, shelters and restorative justice programs. According to Ryan, all he wants is for people to have access to opportunities that would nurture their talents. Let me introduce you to Ryan Donnelly and you'll hear the remainder of his story. Welcome to Speak Up International, ryan.

Ryan Downey: 1:28

Thank you, Rita, and thank you Elton. It's a pleasure to be here with you today, from an abnormally rainy morning in Atlanta.

Ellington Brown: 1:34

In other words, it's raining cats and dogs.

Ryan Downey: 1:38

Certainly, certainly. At least cats Dogs might come later if we hear the thunder Cats.

Ellington Brown: 1:43

Dogs might come later if we hear the thunder. Oh God, you have such an interesting background, I must admit, ryan, so I'm going to try to start here at the beginning. What inspired you to pursue a career in youth development and non-profit leadership?

Ryan Downey: 2:03

Youth development is a space that I've been working in for the last five years I'd say prior to that I was more in workforce development, higher education though ultimately they're inextricably linked, because when we think about workforce development, we're talking about young adults oftentimes at least that's what I did and connecting the dots between the experiences that our youth, our kids, our teens have and the experiences and access to opportunity that young adults have is like a pretty obvious connection to me. Ultimately, I do what I do now running a no-cost after-school summer camp, counseling, food distribution program here in Atlanta, because it's the thing that I needed and I think that's probably a pretty common answer for folks that work in the nonprofit space that I needed and I think that's probably a pretty common answer for folks that work in the non-profit space. We seek to fill a need and fulfill a need or a service that that would have been valuable to us or folks in our orbit and that, in return, fulfills us and provides us with a sense of a value to our community.

Rita Burke: 2:58

Yeah, you are meeting a need and I believe that sometimes, when we serve others, it fulfills something inside of us. Ryan, tell us the story behind your becoming a self-directed individual. Sure.

Ryan Downey: 3:23

Yeah, so when we think about learning, and particularly when we think about self-directed learning or some folks might talk about being autodidactic, right? Or there's different terminology you use Oftentimes we ascribe it to adult learners. So we think adults are more self-directed because they enter into any experience with a certain set of lived experiences and knowledge and expertise, and so they don't all enter as a blank slate, right, that's seeking for an expert to fill them up with knowledge or with how they might do the thing they're attempting to learn. That's a transmission method. Right, that's the traditional classroom, with someone at a chalkboard or a projector or transparency and kids sitting in a row listening and learning. But I would argue that's not only the domain of adult learners and that certainly many children are self-directed learners in their own ways, and we can see that in sports.

Ryan Downey: 4:16

So for me, when I was young, we couldn't afford really expensive sports leagues and so I wasn't learning from a coach and an academy. Right, when I played soccer in my earliest years, I was in a breezeway in the apartments that I lived in with my best friend, amish Patel, using the stairs and the walls, the goal, and developing our own skills and our own sense of touch for the ball and passion and interest and goals, and that extended to everything. That extended to writing. I wasn't looking for writing exercises because that's the thing we were doing for 10 minutes in class. I was writing silly little mystery stories about vegetables that committed silly crimes and then reading them aloud to my classrooms. That second part is critical. So the teacher provided that space right and adults provided some of those spaces for me to learn and experiment and fail and set goals. And that's critical for self-direction is that folks who have experienced service facilitators and not always as experts, and I think that's important for young people and adults alike.

Ellington Brown: 5:16

I would definitely agree with that. I don't have any reason not to at this point. Talk to us a little bit about a latchkey kid.

Ryan Downey: 5:29

Sure, it's not a term that we hear as often anymore for myriad reasons. So I think, generationally, a lot of folks, either whether they be Gen X or elder millennials like myself, will have had the experience of coming home to a house where working parents were at work and where oftentimes I wore a key on a necklace. Because I lost my key so often, my mom eventually made me start wearing down necklace versus putting it on the doorframe or under a rug or something obvious. But that feeds into self-direction, right Like I came home, I would often prepare my own dinner. I would either do my homework or, more often, probably not do my prescribed homework and focus on something I was passionate about Wander around in the woods if I had lost my key and just build things and make wreaths out of vines or build a fort. So it was really. Those two concepts are interrelated and it's obviously not what we want for our kids here.

Rita Burke: 6:38

That's why I provide an after-school program, because it's decidedly less safe to wander around a city or even the suburbs nowadays than it probably was in the 90s, which is unfortunate, I think, for kids. That I find intriguing. You said that the term latchkey kids is not being used much anymore. Talk to us about why you think that is the case, please.

Ryan Downey: 6:52

I think culturally we probably as adults, at least institutionally, have found it less acceptable to leave kids to their own devices during unstructured hours, so outside of school time or during the summer during breaks. There was a story in the news here recently of a mother here in Georgia who let her kid like ride his bike into town in a rural area and the police showed up and arrested her. The things that we define as neglect or as doing harm to children nowadays have changed, so we don't leave kids to their own devices and there is again some real value to that, because terrible things do happen to young people who are wandering around without someone looking out for them. I live in Atlanta. Atlanta is a hub for trafficking, right Like. We can't ignore that. There's real risk out on the streets for folks that wander around, for kids in particular. So I just don't. I don't think it's part of the common vernacular because it just doesn't happen as often or we don't talk about it for fear of being judged or penalized.

Ellington Brown: 7:49

What does your organization do and what does your clientele look like?

Ryan Downey: 7:57

Yeah. So we provide, by design, no cost. We could say free, but free feels a little bit, feels a little bit more loaded than no cost. No cost after school, summer camp, individual and group therapy. So counseling programming, weekly food security support that serves families and seniors and multi-generational households. And then community engagement programming because we run a city of Atlanta rec center through an operating agreement lease, so my staff are managing this asset for the whole community in the middle of a robust and highly active public park.

Ryan Downey: 8:29

So that's what we do and for whom do we do it? We've been here since 1998. And the young folks whom we serve and their families are traditionally black, indigenous people of color. They would often come from low to moderate income households. So here in the zip code we're in, like the median household income is, I want to say, somewhere in the 80 to 90 thousand dollar range, right, and typically our families are in the 20 to 40 thousand dollar range, so well below that mark, and often have multiple generations of family members living in the house and are trying to hang on to space in a community that has actively displaced legacy residents. So that's who we seek to serve.

Rita Burke: 9:13

Quite a worthy task, quite a worthy venture, and I'm sure that the people that you serve benefit tremendously from what you do Now. Ryan, in your bio you mentioned that youth are assets to your community. I need to get my head around that notion, that concept of youth being an asset. Can you talk to us about that please?

Ryan Downey: 9:47

Sure, look, it's a stance that is in direct opposition to one that many folks, particularly affluent folks and often affluent white folks in urban areas like Atlanta, might hold, whether they name it or not, which is that poor people, and particularly poor black and brown children, pose a risk or somehow create a deficit in the community.

Ryan Downey: 10:12

Young people, regardless of their background, are not inherently positioned to experience adverse impacts. Right, everyone arrives in the world with the same potential and the same possibilities, but the doors get closed really quickly for a lot of folks based on the zip code they're born in, the income of their parents, the color of their skin, and we want to position our young people as potential solutions to the challenges that we see for our community, as any parent would for their own kids. Like. We shouldn't just feel that way about the kids we make. Right, we should think that about any young person and any person in general, but I focus on youth because that's primarily who we work with, and our young people are only deficits insofar as we place them at a deficit, and we're very good at that. For what it's worth. We do that well in the States.

Ellington Brown: 11:01

What lessons have you learned from where you work? I should say at year up, presently club, yeah, yeah, okay, you talk a little bit about europe yeah, I'll talk about europe.

Ryan Downey: 11:16

So I spent nine years at europe now europe united prior to east atlanta kids club, and so europe works with these feel like political terms nowadays to say things like opportunity, youth, right, it's like a coded language.

Ryan Downey: 11:30

What that definition means is 16 to 24 year olds who are not working full-time, earning a living wage and not enrolled in school full-time. So it goes back to the previous answer about assets, deficits, trajectories. So what we did there was provided workforce development, so IT training, customer service training, business skills training to young people who were not matriculating through college and who had a need to achieve some mobility for themselves and their family, financially and in terms of their career pathways. And I learned a lot there because I started there being a little bit younger than some of the students who I taught I had just graduated from graduate school and I was 24, and I had a couple students who were older than me and we had all come from pretty similar backgrounds but obviously had landed in different places based on the opportunities that presented themselves to us along the way, and so it was a coming-of-age experience for me as well for that decade really learning about myself in a professional environment and sharing so many successes and so many setbacks with amazing and talented young adults.

Rita Burke: 12:33

Based on what you just said about supporting and helping young adults, share with us one of your super success stories.

Ryan Downey: 12:46

Yeah, so many at Year Up. And then I'll share a little bit about East Atlanta Kids Club. It's easier sometimes to measure success for young adults than it is for kids, and that's unfortunate, I think, because we measure success in terms of things like how much money you earn or the kind of job you can land, or buying a home or graduating from college, and we should probably look at all growth and transformation at all inflection points as equally valuable. Right, it all leads us there. But for the young adults that year up we had so many success stories. I was an instructor, I was a program manager and then I worked in enrollment and admissions and so I got to see it from every end of the process. And so I heard, especially in admissions, folks' stories as we interviewed them for the program and heard the setbacks they had going to college and having to leave to take care of an ill family member and be a caregiver, maybe having run-ins with the law and having a record that needed to be restricted or expunged and not knowing how to proceed. And what we would have is young people then making $60,000 or $70,000 a year later working for some of the biggest corporations here in Atlanta and in Chicago when I worked there, I've been buying their first homes and helping their younger siblings go to college and helping their mom with bills and I think that those were amazing glow-ups for one year on LinkedIn. And in real life is these young people that are in their 30s, who are taking on positions of leadership, who are joining boards, who are raising their hands to have influence and leadership in their community and taking power in a way that is really useful and that's really necessary if we want to keep this on, not keep this on track. Get this nation on track.

Ryan Downey: 14:27

And then Kids Club. If you'll allow me just a real brief, like I have an eighth grader right now who's been with us for five years and she's tremendous. She should be the next mayor of Atlanta right. And she, in the same podcast studio, has interviewed city council members and entrepreneurs and activists. She's run 5Ks through our partnership with Girls on the Run. She's helped make a film through a film camp that we run that had a premiere at the Plaza Theater with nearly 300 people in attendance. She's spoken at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Conference on Women. She's amazing. She's an eighth grader. She's doing more than many adults do to shape her city and her community.

Ellington Brown: 15:04

I was just getting ready to ask you about that, ryan. I'm sure you have many stories and thanks Rita for bringing that up and asking him to give us an example of the good things that are coming out of his organization, the current organization that Ryan's working in. How do you feel working with Black and Brown kids through these programs that your organization offer? How does that make you feel?

Ryan Downey: 15:37

Yeah, it is true. If you look at my experience at Europe Chicago, europe, atlanta, then Northern Virginia sites there, and then now my experience at East Atlanta Kids Club I'm often one of the only white people present, and that was true when I was a poet in residence in the Chicago public schools as well. I would sometimes be the only white person that went into a lot of the schools in South and West sides of Chicago that I taught in, and so that does feel that feels strange. But it feels strange almost like externally, like watching it like from outside of myself and seeing like why are there not more folks like me present here? Because nothing about doing the work feels strange.

Ryan Downey: 16:13

This is the work that I've always done. It's the community that I've always been in, and I grew up in Atlanta and in the south suburbs of Atlanta in a diverse community. I feel more isolated and more out of place, like in a room full of white folks, because we just don't always have a lot of shared experiences and or values or interests or beliefs, although it's not always true. I live in an awesome community here in East Atlanta that is both diverse and where people have different kind of paths. But yeah, I mean, it's always been my work. I've never really tried to intellectualize it too much. It feels good to do it because it creates opportunity for folks that deserve opportunity, because everyone does. It's that simple sometimes.

Rita Burke: 16:56

I so agree with you that everyone deserves opportunity. Wouldn't the world be a wonderful place if everyone in this world walked into that idea, that concept, that philosophy of everyone deserving opportunity. So you were relatively comfortable being the only white guy working with these folks. How do they respond to you how? How do they treat you? Are they accepting? Are they embracing? Do they see you as one of them? Talk to us about that, please.

Ryan Downey: 17:38

Yeah, I've had, so it's funny when I lived in Chicago my answer would be different than now. Living back in Atlanta, I've never had students whether they be the young people we work with now or the young adults that I worked with at my previous organization in Atlanta really give me too much grief or look at me as anything other than just a member of a shared learning community or shared just community in general. I did have some students in Chicago who were uncomfortable with a white man being a coach or a mentor or an advisor in an academic setting and that was unsettling for me. But I can actually I could understand it pretty quickly After being in Chicago for a while and recognizing the ways in which really deep, insidious hypersegregation that is largely the result of steering and redlining and lots of practices that still suddenly happen all around this country had created a community where there was just very little change of any kind of shared experience between black and white folks.

Ryan Downey: 18:41

Right Like folks might show up to a financial district in the loop and work side by side to some extent, but they didn't go home to communities near each other. They didn't play on the same sports teams or join the same social clubs. It just wasn't how it worked really there, and Atlanta feels a little bit different in that respect.

Ryan Downey: 18:58

So I've not faced the same kind of jarring disconnect that I had there sometimes.

Ellington Brown: 19:05

So you are the executive director of East Atlanta Kids Club, which I guess it started in 2020?

Ryan Downey: 19:15

I started in 2020.

Ellington Brown: 19:16

You started in 2020. Okay, so you started in 2020 and you have a car. Anyway, talk to us about being the executive director at East Atlanta Kids Club, where it is diverse and, at least looking at Google Maps, it appears to be very diverse in that area. Do you drive to work or do you walk?

Ryan Downey: 19:45

I could do either one. I live a mile away. I live in Ormwood Park, which is just the other side of Moreland, so the state route right here, next to the neighborhood, and we serve students from all across Southeast Atlanta. We had kids from 37 schools last year. So further west and south of me, further east, north of here, this whole quadrant of the city we have students and families from and more.

Ryan Downey: 20:05

When you ask about being executive director, it has less to do with the folks whom we serve and our staff and our community, and more just the pressure of being an executive director of a small nonprofit amid a turbulent time in terms of resources, particularly government resources. Right, like, honestly, like one of the advantages I think I have in engaging with philanthropy is, even though I serve a diverse discomfort, and I think there's power in that that we should acknowledge. And too seldom organizations like this are led by white men, like white men are executive directors at arts organizations or conservation organizations, often not in youth and family organizations, which is, I think, a shame and something we can do better at.

Ellington Brown: 21:10

You talk about our. How do you use your power in order to motivate individuals that are going through the steps that your organization provides for success?

Ryan Downey: 21:26

As an executive director without a development team because we don't have any staff dedicated to fundraising, it's like me and the board right, the most powerful thing I can do. I hate this. I'm out here shaking all the money trees and seeing which leaves fall off and trying to grow opportunities like this podcast studio. I'm sitting in right. It was funded with corporate funding and community foundation funding, building a film studio, creating a maker space with t-shirt presses and laser cutters, doing weekly food distributions and getting corporate and family foundation support to do that. We're trying to provide resources so that folks aren't worried about just getting basic needs met and instead can nurture their interests, and that's what money allows us to do. And money doesn't just naturally flow into all communities and households equitably right, so you have to go make it move the way you want it to move make it move the way you want it to move.

Rita Burke: 22:34

Ryan Downey, who obviously is the community builder, and those are the people we have conversations with and speak of, international people who are making a difference in their communities. I believe that for people, for a community of black and brown people, to embrace and to value and to benefit from what you're doing, you have to have special leadership skills. As a white man, as you described it, to what special do you bring, to what special leadership approaches do you bring to the groups that you work with?

Ryan Downey: 23:15

Yeah, it'd be better to interview them than not me, right, because I'd hate to put words in any in like staff's mouths or in my students' mouths or family's mouths a little bit in the sense that I don't see. So I both do and don't see. My pathway is fundamentally different, right? So I identify the ways in which we have some shared experiences financially, economically, in terms of going from a working class background to where I am now, which is much more comfortable for me and my kids and my wife and I'm willing to name where our experiences diverge and what I don't know, and I think that's probably useful. Right, I'm accessible. I'm transparent, probably to a fault. I'm unwilling to play linguistic games about what we do to appease folks and to water down the work. I think those are certainly some of the leadership skills that work at this organization. They're probably also, if we're being honest, like the limiting factors for whether I can work at a much larger organization.

Rita Burke: 24:18

I want to hear more about that transparency.

Ryan Downey: 24:22

Yeah, no, I'm pretty open about everything. So if we think about my staff, for example, because a lot of times at nonprofits we think about the folks whom we serve, but the staff are equally important and, frankly, are from the same communities and are having the same kind of experience and have dedicated their life to this work at a significant cost to themselves, because this work is not financially remunerative in the way that a lot of other career pathways are. So if I think about them, like the transparency, like I'm very honest about the pressures that the organization faces, what we're going to do to relieve them. Where we are financially Wanting to know, like where my program team wants to grow, what they want to do, like my job, is to get resources for them, it's not to establish guardrails for them.

Ryan Downey: 25:04

That's the wrong way to think about this position. And we're here in a public rec center, right, so we're always community-facing. I'm always in the park, I'm always in this building, someone can always come talk to me about anything. I really don't have any boundaries there. And part of that might be generational and just the way I think about work and folks might just think about work. But I just try to be accessible and open and honest and receptive to things that we should do differently.

Ellington Brown: 25:31

That are my blind spots I would say one thing that your power lies in the fact that you do listen, and I think that is extremely important in order to get your point across, you being authentic, without having to give up something of yourself in order to get something that you want. I know that you're having, I won't say, financial problems, but, boy, it'd be nice if you could get a couple more bucks under your belt. I'm sure, sure.

Ryan Downey: 26:23

Always Do people have to pay money to come into the kids club or what happens to people who don't have money? Pay is like a really a token amount. So for after school it might be $50 a week, for summer camp $250 a week. Those are like below market rate for profit or even other nonprofit programs, because we're not trying to make our money on the back of families and kids in need. That doesn't make sense.

Ellington Brown: 26:45

I agree with you on that. The reason I'm asking the question is I just want to make sure that people see the East Atlanta Kids Club as inclusive. Summer camp that you go to, which is, I think, very cool, is 150 bucks, which is nothing compared to what a lot of people have to pay to go to summer camp and go camping. So what happens to individuals? Let's say, my mom comes to the East Atlanta Kids Club and I'm the toddler and I want to go to camp, but my mom doesn't have the money to send me to camp. So what happens to the kids that don't have the money?

Ryan Downey: 27:31

Sure. So again, it's free for 95% of our kids pay nothing. So the ones that pay that token amount as families that are earning above 300% of the federal poverty line based on household size. So for I, have a family of four right Two kids and a wife. That level is like 90 something thousand, I think in 2025, which is none of our. Most of our families are nowhere near that.

Ryan Downey: 27:52

Typically, the folks that are above it are way above it Dual income households making $150,000, $200,000 a year.

Ryan Downey: 27:57

Those folks might pay the amount to subsidize other folks, but everyone else is free. The way that they're free, or no cost, as I said before, is I raise a ton of money Like my job is to raise the better part of $842,000 this year and we're almost halfway there, which is pretty great in a hard year and I do that through family foundations, through corporate foundations and corporate giving, through, in better times, government grants at all levels of government, federal down to municipal and from individual donors that give gifts of all sizes, as small as $5 and as big as $50,000. And that's how we pay for this. It really should come from the folks that have the margin and the capital to do that and not from folks who need to get all their other needs met and will let child care be the thing that goes unfulfilled, because it somehow ends up being like a tertiary need relative to housing and food and health care. Families don't deserve that and kids don't deserve that.

Rita Burke: 28:50

And kids don't deserve that. To speak up internationally, we seek to inform, educate and inspire, and we're currently doing that by listening to the story of Ryan Downey. Mr Ryan Downey share with our audience something that puts a smile on your face, something that makes your heart sing.

Ryan Downey: 29:15

Yeah, work-related or anything.

Rita Burke: 29:20

Entirely up to you.

Ryan Downey: 29:21

But you're smiling right now.

Ryan Downey: 29:23

Yeah, look. So I never want any interview to go by without really naming the joy that is my children, particularly because I decided late in the game to have them. My wife and I, as you know from before then, if you have a three and a one-year-old Arlo, our son, and Sabine, my daughter and we were together almost 20 years before we made the decision to have children and I had worked with children and worked with young adults for my whole career before we made that decision. So it was an informed decision in every way, and we talk about lifelong learning. There's nothing that will make you realize how dumb you are and how little more than having kids.

Ryan Downey: 30:06

They have, I think, expanded my capacity for knowledge, for love, for empathy, for my sense of duty, my endurance and stamina and ability to resolve, to be resilient, and they just make me happy. They make me exhausted. My three-year-old makes me frustrated. He hit me this morning and growled no at me because he can't figure out how to verbalize what he wants, and that's sad, but also it's like amazing to watch him start expressing himself and saying this is something I'm not happy about and I gotta let you know. That's awesome. We made that. So my children and then the kids here, like it's not the same as having your own kids, but the kids here when they come in and want to run up to me and hug my leg or give me a fist bump or ask me to come throw a ball with them, like I think that's really powerful too and helps make all the adult work that you do in the back end to make an organization like this thrive more palatable.

Ellington Brown: 30:56

If I may say so myself, I would think they probably see you as the community's dad where all the kids come to be, with dad number two, and I think that's a good thing. Kids need someone that they can look up to outside of their parents. Sometimes at home things may not be as pleasant as we would like it to be, but somehow or another, individuals like you help the individuals that need help the most. So what advice would you give to someone looking to start or grow a non-profit that serves kids?

Ryan Downey: 31:38

Yeah, I think common advice that you hear from folks, whether they be executive directors or founders or maybe program staff, when someone says they want to start a non-profit, is don't start with the idea that you have to start. Something like look to see what exists already first, because we've talked. So look, there's not a scarcity of resources. It's artificial and yet it still feels very real when we're out here trying to raise money, we can believe in a spouse that there is abundance, but if it is, it's locked in silos and there's only so much we can do with that. And sometimes people start something because they're passionate about being of service but they really don't want the smoke to be colloquial of running an organization and doing all the operations and working on the annual audit and like dealing with monitoring and compliance and all the fun stuff that comes with running a business or an organization building a board and working to maintain your vision, hiring folks, legal, all that stuff and so don't do it. Don't start a nonprofit as your first step. See what's in the community where you can lend your talent, your time and your testimonial and your ties, right your relationships. And if that doesn't fulfill the need or if what you have is a vision that is like separate from anything that exists. Then start going down that road, but do it with mentorship and folks that are willing to open their networks to you and don't don't go it alone.

Ryan Downey: 33:00

And I'll say this, particularly looking in this community here in atlanta, I see a lot of organizations that serve women and children, particularly the most vulnerable women and children, folks living on the streets, folks living in extended stays, in the deep throes and trappings of poverty. I see them led by women, and primarily Black women, who lead with passion and authenticity and all the heart you can imagine, but get stuck, really, in a cycle of honestly suffering and struggling themselves to meet this mission and this need in the community without the support, without all that other stuff I named. And it's just, it's painful. It's painful to see people care so much and to let their own health and let their own wellness fall to the wayside along the way. So I think there's other ways to figure out, like how you might be of service before you do this, and if you do it, you've got to have people in your corner. Yeah, absolutely.

Rita Burke: 33:57

Tell us three things that you like, that you admire about Ryan.

Ryan Downey: 34:04

Yeah, I've never been a fan of public feedback, when people give it to me, and so I probably don't like giving it to myself either. But I knew you were going to ask me because you've prepped me a little bit right. So I've always kind of anchored my core skill, my core strength, competency, whatever you want to call it is resilience. I'm not. Nothing keeps me down, nothing sets me off my path, and I'm able to see opportunity in most challenges and to communicate it thusly, sometimes to convince myself, which is performative, and sometimes because I truly believe it. I have internalized that, and so I think that's important.

Ryan Downey: 34:42

Resilience, I think duty. I think duty is the better word and not obligation. I think a sense of duty is important. I think a sense of duty is important. If something doesn't serve someone or something other than myself, I'm not terribly interested, and if something does serve other folks, then I'm going to honor that commitment. Even if it causes me pain or a missed opportunity in the short term, I'm going to do what I say I'm going to do. And then we've talked about transparency and authenticity. I think that's a power, that's a skill, that's something that I might take for granted and expect from folks you don't always get.

Ellington Brown: 35:23

Of course not. You can't expect something like that. The kids are very important to you.

Ryan Downey: 35:33

I can tell what key skills or qualities do you think young people need in order to thrive in today's world? Yeah, so we find ourselves, as we're serving kids and teens, often hiring young adults to serve as camp counselors or instructors, and too often I fall into the same trap that any employer or older adult might fall into of lamenting some of the skills or competencies that young adults don't have, which is just a losing position to sit and vent about what folks don't have. It's better to help them build that. So I think the key skills that I hope our young people are learning here, that they'll then carry on to their young adulthood and eventually adulthood, are some of the things I just named.

Ryan Downey: 36:24

It really is like the ability to turn challenges into opportunities and reframe any kind of context, to see yourself with agency and with the ability to change the situation versus being acted upon. Primarily, I think it is like a curiosity to learn for the remainder of your life and to acknowledge when you don't know something, you don't know what you don't know. I think the ability to communicate yourself, your interests, your needs, your hurts and injuries, your successes is really important. Too many young people struggle to tell their own story, so I think the ability to communicate across any audience with confidence and to know that your voice is powerful is what I wish for our young people.

Ellington Brown: 37:15

I want to thank you, ryan Downey, from Atlanta. I almost forgot I need more coffee. I tell you, I just needed one more cup, I'll be okay.

Ryan Downey: 37:26

That's where I'm headed right after this ends.

Ellington Brown: 37:30

So I'm really glad that we got to talk to you. I know we didn't start on the actual date we were supposed to, but important because that's where you do a lot of your good work. We talked about leadership and advocacy and personal life. You have two beautiful kids that you adore. What else could we possibly ask for in such a positive interview? I'm going to steal one of Rita's questions. I'm going to ask you, rita, you don't mind if I steal one of your questions to you.

Rita Burke: 38:21

Feel free. Feel free to go for it.

Ellington Brown: 38:26

You're always giving advice, always. That's your job. Your job is to advise people to give you money. You're advising kids to help them along the way. Then you have your family, especially the two kids that you've got to advise to make sure that, especially those two, that they're going in the right direction. What was the best advice someone gave? Gave you and that could be anybody, from the day that you were born until today. But who was the individual or individuals that gave you a piece of advice that you've carried since they've given it to you?

Rita Burke: 39:12

Sure.

Ryan Downey: 39:13

Yeah, there's a number of folks that if they didn't exist and they didn't have a positive influence on my life, I wouldn't sit in this seat today and have the opportunity to do the work that I do and to have the family that I have and to speak with confidence. So certainly there's a lot of folks along the way. I'll highlight when I was working at Year Up because, again, I went straight from graduate school. I went straight from undergraduate to graduate school and then straight into the workforce. In the heart of the Great Recession, I had a hard time to come into a workforce, particularly as someone from a working class background who was entering professional arena. I felt in those first couple years, like many people do, like I was fraud or I wasn't supposed to be there.

Ryan Downey: 39:54

I remember riding the train in Chicago to work every day with my suit that I had pieced together from thrift stores and my little ratty ties and shirts that were pit-stained and stank because it was hot on the train and I probably didn't clean them as often as I needed to because I didn't have a washer and dryer in my apartment and all the fun things when you're young and poor and feeling like seeing people wearing coveralls and the clothes of working people. I was like that's what I should look like. That's what I should look like, that's what I should be doing. What am I doing? And I felt like I shouldn't probably be where I was, even at the same time as I was showing up every day to teach young people how they might Europe Atlanta as a program manager, and there was a senior director of program who I still maintain relationship with as a supporter of East Atlanta Kids Club.

Ryan Downey: 40:46

Her name is Faye Dresner I'm still here in Atlanta who reinforced for me. She said you know what you're, what you experience here are rapid growth, are scaling, or how we communicate with all these stakeholders, how we're leveraging all these different resources. You're getting a better education than any MBA, any master's in business administration, any business education could ever provide. And she would keep reiterating that. And I went to school for poetry and comparative literature.

Ryan Downey: 41:15

So I went to school the first person in my family to do that but I studied the things that folks would have you believe are useless and don't have, don't prepare you for the world, particularly a professional working world, which I obviously know is untrue now. But she gave me the confidence that we've talked about lifelong learning, that, like I have the ability to learn and to grow and to I deserve to be where I am based on the experiences I'm having along the way and not purely based on any one specific credential that folks might say you need to have to be in the room. So that's a long-winded way of answering that, but I think it's really important for folks that achieve mobility that someone along the way tells them, like you deserve to be here and you deserve it more every day. And there's, you've earned, deserve to be here and you deserve it more every day.

Ellington Brown: 42:01

And there's you've earned it, and here's how I think there's power in that I do too. I think there's power in that as well. Thank you so much for being with us early this morning. After I've only had one cup of coffee, I'm hurting. I tell you I need emergency treatment now. But thank you, all jokes aside, I really appreciate this conversation, and as soon as it is ready, we will send you an email so that you can get your hands on it and you can do whatever you feel is necessary with the podcast. We try not to put any restraints whatsoever, I'm sorry. Oh, go ahead.

Ryan Downey: 42:45

I just wanted to thank you both as well, elton and Rita. I've done a couple of these interviews and I spend all my work speaking publicly and interfacing with folks. That's how this works. But folks seldom ask me meaningful, thought-provoking questions about myself or my family or my values, and I'm glad this wasn't just a commercial for east atlanta kids club but to the extent that it's like an inextricable part of my identity, what I do. We talked about it a lot, but I really appreciate your thoughtful questions and really pushing me to be exploratory on this rainy Wednesday mornings. What a great way to move into the middle of a week refreshing conversation.

Ellington Brown: 43:25

Rita, do you have something?

Rita Burke: 43:27

you want to add to this. Thank you, ryan. Chatting with you was refreshing, and also, at the end of our conversations, I will say to people that you've added to my life, and I sincerely mean that, that everything you say, when you tell your story and your experiences. It enriches my life and I certainly thank you. But something that you said that will stay with me forever is the fact that people, sometimes young people, struggle to tell their own stories.

Rita Burke: 44:02

And do you know what? There's an African proverb that says until the lion or the tiger begins to tell his or her own story, the hunter will tell the story from his or her perspective. And so, yes, that's something that we do need to instill in our young people. It is challenging, but try your very best to tell your own story. I spoke to a group of young people at a college yesterday, as I said earlier, and that's what I shared with them, and that's what I shared with them the importance of telling your story. In what a form or shape. It doesn't have to be eloquent and articulate at the beginning, but tell your story. So thank you for being on Speak Up International and telling your story.

Ellington Brown: 45:04

Thank you, rita. I hear that we might have more of our kids roaring. Yeah, thank you for tuning in to Speak Up International. If you wish to contact our guest, mr Ryan Downey, please be prepared to submit your name, your email address. Please be prepared to submit your name, your email address and the reason why you wish to contact Mr Downey at https// media platforms you can use to connect to him, which will be listed in the description section on Spotify and other social media platforms. Your voice has the power to inspire, influence and ignite change. We'd love to hear your story influence and ignite change. We'd love to hear your story. We invite you to connect to us by sending your message that includes your name, company or organization name, the valuable service you offer to your community and your email address to info at speakuppodcastca. To connect to our podcast, use Spotify or your favorite podcast platform and search for Speak Up International. You can also find our podcast using our web address, wwwspeakuppodcastca. Our logo has the woman with her finger pointing up, mouth open, speaking up.

Ellington Brown: 46:42

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