On Legacy of Leaders, our hosts Brian Sexton and Mike White welcome outstanding leaders to this uplifting and interesting show, filled with practical advice, personal experiences, and tips for business leaders and aspiring leaders. This week, Brian and Mike sit down with Gary Chartrand of The Chartrand Foundation.
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MW: Welcome back to Legacy Leaders on Daily News Network. I’m Mike white and joining me today is two amazing people. The first amazing person Brian Sexton. We’ve never called The Amazing before. So you’ve made it an amazing day for me already. Well, I appreciate it. And the second person who is more amazing than you and I combined, Gary Sharp, Trent Bell, always a pleasure.
So, today we’re just talking about philanthropy. And, I was at the zoo with my family this weekend, and we’re looking at tigers, and all of a sudden, I saw shark jump and the short term foundation mission house. I was talking them at the beach, and they were bringing up shark trained foundation.
No matter where we go in Jacksonville, the difference you have made in the lives of so many is incredible. And that’s kind of looking at you’ve been doing this a long time and you are continuing to give back to the community. So, wanted to talk to you about the best or the greatest impact you think you’ve, had on an organization.
Like, what was important to you about getting involved in that organization?
GC: Well, I’d have to say education in general would probably be the one area that we’ve really focused hard on over the last 20 years. I remember, when I was working years ago, you know, reading the paper and, reading the paper about 22 f schools in Jacksonville, F schools 22.
And so my wife and I sat down and said, hey, we’re going to start this foundation. You know, there’s lots of great causes, but nothing more important than educating our children. And so we jumped in with both feet and started the foundation specifically on education. And, I got very involved in it. In fact, Governor Rick Scott, pointed me to the state Board of Education.
So I sat on that board from 2010 to 2018 trying to make sure that we had the right policy, working with legislators, to make education better for our kids. And you got involved heavily in the KIPP schools, correct? Yes. Right. Exactly. In fact, we were trying to recruit them. I remember flying up to New York to meet the CEO of KIPP with, John Baker and John Payton, who was our mayor at the time, and Corrine Brown, who was our congresswoman, and, kind of just begging them to come to Jacksonville.
They didn’t want to come to Florida because the per pupil allocation in Florida is pretty low. And they could go to new Jersey and New York and, you know, get like 10,000 more per kid. And so we had, convince them that we could make it work. And so John Baker and I went around town and raised $9 million.
We got the, the, the track, the, dog track, donated their facility to us so that a four story, 90,000 square foot building, off of McDuff. And we had raised the money and retrofitted it and made it a school.
BS: So Mike alluded to all the places where he sees your name. And there are many, many others.
And obviously, I know your in fact, with the J fund and a number of other things, how do you decide from a philanthropic perspective where to put your time and your money? Yeah, I mean, how is it that you can spread out and be effective with so many places?
GC: Yeah. So we’ve really tried to focus in on is how do we make people’s lives better.
And so education is certainly one that, is top of the list. Right. How do you make, you know, especially today. You know, you can’t if you don’t finish high school, you’re going to have a hard time, creating a good life for yourself so that that’s. And health care, you know, we’ve been very involved over the years with Saint Vincent’s Hospital and, donated money to create a heart center over there.
So, we really try to it’s really faith based for us. It’s like, how how can we help with the assets that we have that we’ve been blessed? Then how can we help make people’s lives better and beyond dollars and organizations?
BS: We’ve been talking about football, right. But it’s about people. Sure. Football is about people. Philanthropy is about people.
In television is about people. Yeah. How do you take the task, the responsibility of finding your replacement, finding someone that will do what you do when you’re no longer doing it.
GC: So that’s a good question. And so it’s a family foundation. So it’s my wife and I, but my wife and I’ve been married for 48 years. Nancy.
And, she’s put up with me for that long. It’s a good, good thing. And, we have two children, and so they’re very involved in the foundation. And at some point we’ll get the grandchildren involved in as well. And hopefully that’ll pass along to both our children and our grandchildren. They’re kind of young right now, but when they get a little bit older we’ll do that.
MW: What were the biggest hurdles? It’s as you bring people together, like with KIPP school. Yeah, you raise the money. What other hurdles were there that you had to really either navigate beyond or move out of the way?
GC: Well, I’d have to mention the teachers union. I guess, you know, the teachers union is in the PA, in the public schools, and although KIPP is a public school, all charter schools are public schools, so we don’t embrace the union.
So we don’t ask our teachers to join the join a union. So, the more choice that, we created around town, I guess the more, you know, the teachers union would, would not be in favor of that. They had a, you know, they like public schools, you know, have had a monopoly for years. And these monopolies are not good for the consumer.
We all know that, both in business and I would say also in education. And you’re moving you’re back on the Civic Council. Yeah. What’s the main initiative that you are going to tackle with that? Yeah, actually I’ve been on the Civic Council for like 20 years. And the Civic Council, by the way, is CEO is in town.
There’s about 85 members, I guess, that come together and try to create a business voice, if you will, for some of the biggest issues in town that, that are out there. So, yeah, right now, we just went through a strategic planning process and we’re looking at, downtown is a big issue for us, you know, how do we develop downtown the right way?
I’m on the actually on a a committee called the prepare committee, which is how do we make sure that we get our kids ready for, you know, the 21st century skills. Digital literacy is a big deal with us as well, especially in the underserved community. You know, they may have a computer at school, but when they get home they might not have a computer.
And, you know, the kids that are in the wealthier neighborhoods, they’ve got the latest and greatest computer. So, you know, they get to do their research on on the computer at home at night. And those that don’t have computers in their house are at a disadvantage. So one of the things that we I’ve been involved with is started a nonprofit called the Stem hub to try to teach 21st century skills to kids.
And we did run a, campaign to, go to the business community. Most businesses will lease their computers for three years and, and turn them into, you know, really get much for them. And we ask them to donate them to us. We found a firm audit, Max, that’s actually on our board that helps clean them up. And, we’ve given out, a little over 2000 computers to kids that don’t have computers.
So that’s a that was a nice initiative for us and all that. Max does so much great stuff, especially with the Stem, the hub program and, some really neat Lego competitions. Yeah.
MW: I want a quick update on you have a couple passion projects. One of them is a documentary. This. So, update us on what’s going on with that project.
GC: Yeah. So, in 2010, 15 years ago, Nancy and I, my wife and I went. She’s Portuguese. Her heritage is Polish. And we went to Poland and on a trip with actually two priests that are here in town, Father Remick and Father Andy Laskowski. Brothers. Yep. The brothers and, went over there with them and, was in Warsaw and it was raining that day.
So we were going to take a walking tour of Warsaw and we couldn’t do that because it’s pouring. And we met a lady in front of the church, Saint Stanislaus, Costco’s church. And she invited us in to go to the museum in the basement. And, there was a museum about father puppy Yoshiko, who was a young priest, 34 years old, that was speaking out, very vehemently against communism.
And this is, you know, after, World War two and the Yeltsin conference, you know, we basically handed Poland over to the Soviet Union. Poland is 95% Catholic. That didn’t really go over too well. And so there was a lot of resistance there. And he kind of led a nonviolent resistance to say, you know, we deserve our freedom.
We shouldn’t be, dictated by communism. And so that’s I made a documentary about this priest who ended up giving his life, the, they didn’t like the fact that he was speaking out so vehemently against communism. And, like, a lot of situations, back then, they just they captured him and beat him to death and threw him in the river.
MW: Now take back then. How many years ago was this?
GC: Well, so he. October 19th, 1984 is when he was murdered. I won’t forget that date. Yeah, yeah, it’s a good story. And you told it well. Thank you, thank you. And then, very courageous guy. Yeah. Very brave. He knew he was going to get killed.
MW: You’re also working on a series on the effects of communism.
GC: Correct.
MW: So, where do you hope that to go to, like, when you do this with the series is going to go, to educate students, children. What’s the best?
GC: Well, I think there’s a couple ways. Certainly the streaming services we we’ve been in contact with and want to, you know, they’re always looking for good content.
Yeah. You know, whether it be Hulu or Netflix or what have you. So we’ll go down that path. It’ll be a five episode documentary on it’s called the, The Miracle of Freedom. So and we’ll see. But I also want to carve out, if you will, sort of like a 50 minute or 1 hour, showing so that we could go into the schools and show kids what communism really is about, because I’m not sure that our children really understand how evil it is.
Yeah. You know, it doesn’t work. Has never worked. And, I want to make sure that our kids understand that.
MW: So, Brian, how do you wrap this whole segment up?
BS: Well, listen, the thing that I admire the most about Gary is that he doesn’t stand still, right? I mean, when you’ve been as successful as you have, you could easily justify a vacation, right?
But you look at the most successful people and they’re always reaching into different areas, trying to spread impact on a positive message. This communism project is a big project.
GC: Yeah.
BS: It’s a really big project. So my sense is, is that the show is called Legacy of Leaders. And what you’re really doing is showing the next generation of leaders what it takes to be a leader.
And this is the best example of a leader I can think of in Jacksonville.
MW: I second that Gary. They are always a pleasure. Thank you so much again. Thank you Brian. Always good to see you. Hey, to find out more about all of these projects and more visit us at Daily News network.com. We’ll see you next time on Legacy of Leaders.
