This week Matt is joined by Julie Gehrki, Vice President of Philanthropy at Walmart. She explains how Walmart's philanthropic efforts impact billions of people everyday, starting with their own employees and expanding to communities across the globe. To finish out their conversation, Gehrki advises students seeking a career in philanthropy to gain a diverse set of skills and experiences that will lead to a higher impact.

Philanthropy is a tool. It's an important tool.

It's one I certainly love and have created a career around.

But it's not the only tool.

Excellence, professionalism, innovation and

collegiality. These are the values the Sam M. Walton College

of Business explores in education, business, and the

lives of people we meet every day. I'm Matt Waller, Dean of

the Walton College, and welcome to the Be Epic podcast. I have

with me today, Julie Gehrki, who is Vice President of

Philanthropy at Walmart. Thank you, Julie, for joining me

today.

Thanks for having me. I'm really glad to be here.

Julie, I want to talk about your background a

little bit. But I'd like to start with talking about

Walmart's approach to philanthropy. And I know

Walmart's been engaged in philanthropy for a long time.

And certainly, the Waltons have I, I know when I got to my

office here at the University of Arkansas, in the Dean's office,

I found a letter from Sam Walton, in 1990, where they had

just given a gift and they'd given gifts before then, they'd

given some in the 70s. And of course, this is the Walton

College of Business, so, and the whole university has benefited

from the Walton family. I know Walmart's different, totally

separate. But I think that probably some of that

philanthropic thrust and culture started with with the family

itself.

It certainly did. Sam founded the foundation in

the 80s, late 70s, early 80s. And when I joined 14 years ago,

that was part of what was appealing, is the culture ran

deep. And a lot of companies, people in my job spend a huge

portion of their time defending that a company should do this, I

think we spend a lot of time thinking about how we can drive

greater impact how we can be more effective. But the fact

that we should use our business and philanthropy to make change

in the world and positively affect the systems, we rely on,

environmental and social, really is kind of a part of the

company's fabric. And so that's a huge advantage to my role at a

company like Walmart with that inherited culture. So our

approach today is different than it was then. All of philanthropy

has evolved. But it certainly builds on that culture and those

values. Today, instead of thinking about philanthropy as

kind of a side project, it is deeply embedded. And we actually

start with "What are the social and environmental issues, we can

make a difference on as a company?" Even doing

philanthropy, I recognize that the power of the business model

and the power of Walmart can make greater and more

substantial change. And so that's what we root ourselves in

is the places where the company can take a leadership role. But

inevitably, there's market failures or pieces that it just

doesn't make sense for the company to solve. And we use our

philanthropy pretty surgically in those spaces. We think about

the tools, we have to make a change, our shared value. So

this idea that the business is stronger by solving

environmental and social issues, collaborations with suppliers,

with competitors, you know, really we collaborate with a

massive range of stakeholders. Philanthropy, all of these are

tools we use, and we integrate those to solve problems. So when

we take that approach, it means all the issues we work on,

you're kind of like, of course Walmart works on that. Economic

opportunity, so how do we build economic growth for individuals

so that they advance from frontline jobs to more senior

jobs? Or businesses? How do they grow, particularly

minority-owned, women-owned, smallholder farmers around the

world, using jobs and purchase order. Walmart can lead in both

areas and we can complement with philanthropy. Sustainability, we

think about that as climate, nature, waste, and people. So

all about supply chains and operations. Our philanthropies

focused in the supply chain, but Walmart clearly thinks about

both. Community, with 11,000 communities around the world we

serve. How do we bring our expertise, our logistics, our

people, our product, into that community to be a part of

solutions? And then we a couple of years ago started the Center

for Racial Equity, and really thinking about how in the US, we

work on issues that affect Black and African American people

specifically, but also as a whole and then we work on

finance, healthcare, education, and criminal justice.

That's exciting. Yeah. ESG in general, as a topic

has really just taken off. You know, it's certainly on all of

the agendas of board of directors meetings for publicly

traded companies these days. It's interesting how Walmart

addresses it both through the regular business, and through

the philanthropic arm. And your point is really interesting, I

think about, you know, looking for market failures. In other

words, where is it that maybe you have a public good, or an

externality or something that the markets not addressing

clearly, and then you address that with philanthropy, but

within the key buckets that you're interested in as a firm.

Absolutely. And there are all kinds of examples

where we might need to invest or others might need to invest

short term to get the market working. So that long term,

there's a sustainable solution. So for example, in our work on

nature, we have a commitment to preserve, protect, or

sustainably source from 50 million acres of land and 100

square miles of oceans. Well, a lot of that will be done through

Walmart sourcing practices. But one of the things that our

environmental NGO partners and others think really as part of

the solution is place based initiatives. So working with

governments and saying this whole portion of land, we're

going to conserve some of it, we're going to restore other

parts, we're going to sustainably manage production

and the local people are going to get value out of that we've

got to make the economy work here. While setting those up is

hard, and takes often philanthropic or public

investment, but ideally, long term, the sourcing mechanism,

and sustainable production is going to sustain it and make

value work for everyone. So that's a place where

philanthropy be might be the catalyst and prove it out. But

ideally, we're always hoping that the market can solve and

scale it long term.

Seems like a great philosophy. Because in the long

run, it's got to or it won't be sustainable.

Philanthropy is a limited resource, if we can get the

market working, it grows and scales. You know, I feel really

privileged to work at a place like Walmart, where it's almost

one and a half billion dollars of cash and in-kind that we

invest every year. But still, that's a limited resource when

you look at the world's problems.

You know, I've known so many people over the years, including

a former MBA student of ours, who really didn't have a college

degree, went to work at Walmart in a store, and really worked

hard. And before long was a store manager. Eventually went

and got his undergraduate degree and then got an MBA. And he

eventually was a Senior VP at Walmart. But you know, that kind

of opportunity. That's where the market kind of dressed something

very clearly, I've seen examples of that same kind of thing in

the distribution centers, and in transportation and other areas

as well. But you're right, philanthropy, regardless of how

much money you have, it's still fixed.

And even in the example you're talking about, so

one of the things we're most proud of at Walmart is that

upward mobility of associates. Over 75% of field management

started as hourly associates, but our philanthropy's thinking

about, okay, how do you make that less anecdotal and more

standard? And how do we make that how frontline jobs work? So

for instance, we're investing in credentialing and other routes

so that you can go to college. But if you're learning on the

job, you're getting credit for that. If you've taken a series

of short term credentials, those stack and are meaningful to

employers, what's the digital infrastructure that's needed for

that? How do you make that a lifelong journey that's really

gives you credit for all the ways you learn, and adds up to a

way that hiring managers and employers really recognize it,

and it drives mobility.

I noticed back in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit

US gulf, it caused all kinds of problems. But there's a lot of

information about this in the media. But Walmart played a huge

role in solving a lot of those problems. I know Walmart has

this disaster preparedness summit to address disasters as

they come up, but also to focus on areas that are prone to

disasters, but maybe have minority groups in those areas

or disadvantaged types of groups in those areas. Would you mind

speaking to that?

Sure, I'd be happy to. The legacy of Walmart's role

in Hurricane Katrina, I think is one of the inspirations for how

we work today. It really was this recognition that our

strengths and assets, as a business could uniquely meet

needs in communities. We didn't have to be somebody else to

help, we could really lean into who we are in the community. And

that can be inspiring not just to associates, but to the

community itself. We're seeing the increase of disasters with

climate change, there is no, for instance, the coast of

Louisiana, gets hit now almost every year, and sometimes

multiple times a year. Unfortunately, these places

often do coincide with where a disproportionate number of

underserved populations live. Whether that is indigenous

tribes, black communities, they're disproportionately

feeling the impact of this work, and this evolution that climate

is creating. And so we're really going into those communities and

thinking not only about how we respond when a disaster happens,

which may involve setting up, you know, relief stations in

parking lots, and grant making and raising money from

customers. We have a number of tools, mobile pharmacies,

getting stores up and running as quickly as possible. Those tools

are all there for when a disaster happens. And we

certainly want to deploy them. But we see in communities where

there's capacity, and investment and planning on the front end,

the return to normalcy is much faster. And so how do we build

that resiliency into communities and make sure that that is done

in as equitable way as possible that the local government is

prepared for it, and that we're investing so those relationships

exist. And that plan exists ahead of time. Because,

unfortunately, many of these communities, it's not really

whether they'll be hit, it's when. And so the more resiliency

we can build, the better we'll be.

Julie, I also saw that Walmart has been as part of

ESG really helping with grants for smallholder farmers in

India, Mexico and Central America. You've been doing this

for almost five years. These grants have reached over 700,000

smallholder farmers, and 44% of them are run by women. And so

the grants are supposed to help basically the livelihoods of

smallholder farmers. But would you mind talking a little bit

about that, as well?

Be happy to. This work is really inspiring. And

again, based on this idea that Walmart in these countries can

often source from smallholders and that the likely greatest

increase in livelihoods is becoming part of a formal market

and selling to the formal market, where they can get

higher prices, more predictability, all of those

pieces. But at the smallest size, a farmer, they often

aren't ready for that, don't have access to it. And so we've

been investing in farmer producing organizations. So

groups of small holders that come together to get better

inputs, better access to things like quality seed, good

technical advice, and can sell together and aggregate their

product. What we find is when these farmer producing

organizations are strong, they build the capacity and

capability of everyone. And then over time, they grow to a place

where they do sell more to formal markets, and those

livelihoods grow production, they may need to add in other

crops to rotate. You know, I was in a farm in India, where a

woman was growing mushrooms for the local market. And that was

an addition to her kind of row crops that she'd been growing,

but she was getting much higher prices from these specialty

mushrooms she was selling to restaurants in nearby big

cities. And that was taught through the FPO. And so you see

layering in to get value and the FPO really thriving, and women

often taking leadership in that. So we're really excited about

that. Our Central America business has a long history of

sourcing from smallholders. So we see that the growth and that

access to formal markets can happen. But it often comes with

maturity of these FPOs that we're able to invest in

philanthropically, and then they can sell to us or to other

formal businesses. It isn't really about us getting special

access, it's really about growing the capacity. So that

system is stronger, and then we'll all benefit.

That's a great approach. You started your

career with Walmart, the Walmart Foundation, as Senior Director

of Business Integration, when I see the title business

integration, I'm not surprised in a business, a regular

business, but in a foundation. I don't think I've ever seen that

before. And you did it for almost nine years. So what did

that mean?

Yeah, so in fairness, I started as a manager

and kind of worked my way up over the years to that role. But

I would say that really was about growing this model of

integrating business and philanthropy together, of

working with business leaders. You know, I speak to our interns

often in early days of their time at Walmart. And inevitably,

many of them come up to me and say, like, how do I get on your

team, and I play this game with them, that's tell me where

you're interning. And inevitably, I can find through

their job that they're interning that isn't in kind of the global

responsibility team, how they're going to make a difference on

its social or environmental issues. And so I spend a lot of

time doing that with business leaders, helping them see just

through their day to day business, how they could not

only drive higher productivity or better returns through just

their day-to-day work, but then how we could partner together to

change the whole system, and make it work for everybody and

just have better outcomes. And so that's really what that meant

over that time was at a point of inflection where we were going

from doing that we probably started that work in hunger

relief. Walmart's a large grocer, you can see where we

have assets, not only in our everyday low price proposition,

to help on issues of food security, but also food

donations and those types of expertise. And then it grew to

think, okay, this is so much higher impact, to build our

philanthropy with our business, that we should really only work

in areas where we're bringing this together. And that title

really reflected a time where we were spending, we were kind of

systematically going through the portfolios and building those

partnerships across the business.

Julie, I'd like to hear a little bit about how you,

personally became interested in philanthropy.

I grew up with parents who were incredibly

focused on giving back and frankly, thought my career would

be in the nonprofit sector. Spent a decent portion of time

taking different jobs around the world, learning about impact,

trying to prepare myself with the skill base to run a

nonprofit. And as I was finishing graduate school, I had

a conversation with the dean about where I might go, and

candidly wanted him to send my resumes all to a bunch of

nonprofits. And he said, I'd like to send it to Walmart. I

fought him on it but he insisted, and they were the

first people to call. I came up and interviewed during the week

I was graduating, kind of thought it was a practice

interview. And that this was going to get me prepared for the

real conversations I would have about jobs I actually wanted.

Ended up having a four hour conversation while I was there,

where I became really interested about the role business could

have in solving big problems. And very convinced that Walmart

was interested in being a leading player in that. And that

was exciting. The idea that I could be a part of thinking not

only about the philanthropy, but partnering with the business was

inspiring to me. And I'm somebody who doesn't really like

to just run things, I'm kind of always wanting to think about

what's next and learn and grow. And a place like Walmart has

been endless opportunities for me to learn something new every

day. And so that's what keeps me there.

So there may be some students listening to this

that would be interested in going into philanthropy. What

advice do you have for them?

Sure, I often tell them to think a little bit more

broadly, think about driving impact. What change do you want

to be a part of making in the world? Philanthropy is a tool.

It's an important tool, it's one I certainly love and have

created a career around. But it's not the only tool. It may

be that as a buyer of beef, you are the most influential person

on deforestation, or as a person in our operations you are having

in real estate, the biggest impact on sustainable

refrigeration. And so really thinking about what you hope to

achieve, and then being really open that that may be in

philanthropy, but it also could be in broader spaces, collect

all the skills you can, some of them are really boring, or you

think they are, but I am grateful that I know, program

evaluation, and I spent time learning analytics, and those

places come together to make you a more impactful leader over

time. And so that's kind of the two pieces is think broadly

about it. And then look for lots of experiences that build a

diversity of skills. Because when you bring those together,

you're much higher impact.

Well, Julie, thank you so much for sharing with us,

I really didn't know much about Walmart's approach to

philanthropy. It was very interesting learning about it.

And thank you for your advice to students as well. And thank you

for been on the show. Appreciate that.

Thanks for having me. It's great to spend some

time with you.

On behalf of the Sam M Walton College of

Business. I want to thank everyone for spending time with

us for another engaging conversation. You can subscribe

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