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Julie Causey: Minneapolis has obviously been under a ton of stress in all of the national ways, the industry has been under a lot of stress, and there’s this huge opportunity to recreate not only public media in our area but throughout the nation….So what I really felt like is, by the end of the [board] interview process, whether it was the finalists who ended up on the board or whether it was the folks that were in the screening process throughout, we had ascertained the fact that they, in fact, cared and…were getting really excited about being a part of something.

But we had also connected them with each other and with a number of executive team and board members, so they were beginning to feel like they were part of it before they even formally had an offer to join the board. And I think that that was part of what allowed us to then put folks who we consider bench strength to be in other positions that aren’t yet board of trustees positions….We even had folks that came through the interview process that are [now in] leadership roles in those advisory committees. There were folks that were, for instance, super-excited, super-interested in the current [events] or the classical [music programming]—where we do more classical music distribution than anybody in the country. And a third one where we found a lot of specific interest was Marketplace, where that just happens to be something that people throughout the country in the business community, including very small businesses and family-owned businesses, are very, very interested in.

And so we saw the natural touch points, I think, because [we were] pushed to really do an interview process that allowed us to understand people’s humanity and their background and their interests and their connections with us. And that’s what I think gave us the opportunity to say, ‘Look, we’d love to start you with some pretty extensive work in classical music. And we consider there to be an opportunity to join the board over a period of years, and would you be interested in that?’ And we just got all yeses, just literally eight for eight yeses.”