Featured Guest: Mayor Melvin Carter

Melvin Carter is a fifth-generation Saint Paul resident, continuing to lead with an unapologetic equity agenda during his second term as mayor of Minnesota’s Capital City. As the 46th, and first African-American mayor of the City of Saint Paul, he’s raised the city’s minimum wage to $15/hour; tripled free programs in rec centers; eliminated late fines in public libraries; made unprecedented investments in affordable housing; expanded immigrant & refugee support resources, and launched an Office of Financial Empowerment and an Office of Neighborhood Safety. One signature initiative is CollegeBound Saint Paul, which starts every child born in the city with a $50 College Savings Account, starting January 1, 2020.

Episode Transcript

0:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]

0:01 – Mayor Melvin Carter

If a banker is a public servant. If a banker wakes up every morning to help people make money work for them, for their families, for their businesses for their lives, for their careers, for their ideas, and help people leverage finances, as a building block to daylight dreams. I think that’s what a banker is.

0:29 [MUSIC PLAYING]

0:31 – David Reiling

Welcome to the NextGen Banker podcast, where we explore what’s next in banking and talk with the innovators responsible for creating positive change in the financial sector. I am your host, David Reiling. And I am very excited to welcome St Paul’s Mayor Melvin Carter today. Mayor Carter, welcome.

0:47 – Mayor Melvin Carter

Thank you very much. I appreciate you having me on.

0:49 – David Reiling

Fantastic. Well just before we get started today, just want to remind our audience to stick around at the end for our musical feature. The NextGen Banker episode showcases one new artist from somewhere around the globe every episode. So, check it out at the end of this podcast.

1:08 – David Reiling

So, we’re honored today to have the mayor of the city of Saint Paul, Melvin Carter. Mayor Carter was elected in 2017 and is currently serving in his second term. He has made equity a priority in his agenda. Increasing resources for underserved populations, communities and creating programs like college bound Saint Paul, which we’ll talk about a little bit later.

1:31 – David Reiling

Before taking office, Mayor Carter was Saint Paul city’s city council, and also held previous positions as board chair of Saint Paul Promise Neighborhood, director of Minnesota office of early learning, and the executive director of Minnesota’s children’s cabinet.

1:48 – David Reiling

So, mayor with that kind of setup, let’s go right into the questions. You’ve worked extensively on equity-based agenda since your election five years ago, and being a business that’s headquartered in Saint Paul’s, we’ve seen your work firsthand relative to the raise in minimum wage, expanding programs for rec centers and much more.

2:12 – David Reiling

So, where do you see Saint Paul now compared to 2017? And how has that focused on equity helped the community thrive?

2:21 – Mayor Melvin Carter

Well, thank you for the question. I appreciate that. You’re a St Paul business. You’re my bank. I’ve had an account with you since about fifth grade. And so, I appreciate you guys as the way Sunrise serves in community.

2:35 – Mayor Melvin Carter

There’s been a couple of names since I was in fifth grade. But it’s the same entity, it’s the same connection, it’s the same commitment, and service to community. And I greatly appreciate having a partner like you guys. So, Thanks for having me here.

2:48 – Mayor Melvin Carter

I think the first question is really critical where are we, as opposed to five years ago. And the answer is we’re on a journey. We know that this is going to be a long-term journey. We didn’t expect to quote unquote, solve anything in four years or in five years. But the goal is to put Saint Paul on a journey towards kind of broader more shared prosperity.

3:09 – Mayor Melvin Carter

And I think the first question of that journey. And you’re absolutely right. Some of the things we’ve done from raising the minimum wage to college Mount Saint Paul. To a guaranteed income trial, and all those types of things really center around having a more democratic economy.

3:25 – Mayor Melvin Carter

Democratic with a small d of course, economy where Saint Paul, Minnesota has always had enough to go around. It just hasn’t always gone around. And so, the first driving question for us. And we can get into it more, if we’re going to focus on equity is what does equity mean.

3:44 – Mayor Melvin Carter

Oftentimes in our social justice circles we get stuck and we’re not sure because it’s this amorphous concept. We sort of know what it’s not, but we don’t know what we’re guiding towards. And you can’t build something, you can’t grow something, you can’t get something, if you don’t know what it is just on the basis of a definition of what it’s not.

4:01 – Mayor Melvin Carter

So, for me, I go to a definition that will be no stranger to Sunrise at all. When I was in business school, equity was a money word. It wasn’t a social justice word at all. It referenced shares of ownership. It referenced participation in decision making processes. And it referenced participation in an economy if I own equity in a company. And that company has a good quarter, I have a good quarter or too.

4:25 – Mayor Melvin Carter

So that’s the driving perspective. That’s the driving approach toward equity that we take is it’s about ensuring every member of our community is both that sort of symbolic owner of our community and the things that happen in City Hall. But also facilitating wealth creation through asset ownership and accumulation of appreciating transferable assets.

4:48 – Mayor Melvin Carter

The second piece is inviting people into the decision-making process. You and several folks from sunrise have been a part of those processes on a various number of things. And we think if we do those two things really, right. That’s the route toward a shared economy.

5:03 – David Reiling

Well, that’s fantastic. And so, let’s jump right into it because Justice Page a line that he said, one time, he said, educational justice or equity is social equity or justice. And so that has always stuck in my head.

5:16 – David Reiling

And so, when I think about the initiative of college bound Saint Paul, and for those listeners who don’t know the program, the basic elements of the program is that every child born in the city starts with a $50 college savings account.

5:30 – David Reiling

And I see firsthand and I do work with nonprofits trying to get first generation young adults through high school and into college and through college to be successful.

5:42 – David Reiling

So, there are so many obstacles that they face, and money is one of them, but a very important one. And so, when you think about this seed of $50 in a college savings account, what encouraged you to get this program going? And what does success look like?

5:59 – Mayor Melvin Carter

David, I fell in love with the concept of college savings accounts back when I was working at the state as executive director of the Minnesota children’s Academy. I heard a research report that suggested that children with college savings accounts who graduate from high school are more likely to go to college. That seemed really obvious.

6:16 – Mayor Melvin Carter

And maybe one of the most self-selecting studies I’ve ever heard, until I heard the details. Which was children from low- and moderate-income families, who have literally more than $1 set aside for college. When they graduate from high school are three times more likely to go to college and when they do, they’re four times more likely to graduate.

6:33 – Mayor Melvin Carter

To be clear, when I say college, I mean something after high school. So, we’re being very inclusive here. That seems like too much to not do something about. And it’s really a mindset shift.

6:46 – Mayor Melvin Carter

I was on a comedy show once. And the host goes $50 for college. That might not be enough. And there’s the punchline. But here’s the thing, it’s not really about the amount of money anyways. It’s about the powerful statement that we make when we tell our children, we believe in you enough to invest in you.

7:04 – Mayor Melvin Carter

And that when we invest directly in people, there’s always a return. There’s children born every day in Saint Paul and across our country for whom high school graduation looks like a finish line.

7:15 – Mayor Melvin Carter

And so, while $50 might not pay for a first semester in college, what it can do is create a powerful vehicle for us to start casting our imagination beyond that line of high school graduation from birth.

7:27 – Mayor Melvin Carter

Everybody comes to you for a loan, everybody who comes to you for a savings account, everybody comes to you for financial products. They have some vision in mind. And if they didn’t have a vision in mind, they wouldn’t be coming to you nothing would be able to manifest.

7:40 – Mayor Melvin Carter

And so, this is about sewing that vision into our community for all of our children. You said, all of our children. And that’s exactly right. I love telling mothers that if you have a child in Saint Paul and you don’t want your child to have a college savings account. There’s paperwork to fill out. Because you really mean every single child in our community. We’re really excited about it.

8:00 – David Reiling

Yeah, it’s fantastic. Now you recently announced the expansion of the program. And so, we can talk a little bit about what the next steps are there. But also included in that was I think a component of guaranteed income in somewhat of a college savings bonus, if you will, that’s attached to that. And well, tell us a little bit more about that.

8:20 – Mayor Melvin Carter

So, the researcher who I was quoting, actually ends up being the researcher who’s doing the research and the evaluation on the work that we’re doing now. And it’s really important in the political space.

8:33 – Mayor Melvin Carter

We don’t have a whole lot of experience with elected leaders saying here I’m going to create an infrastructure to provide independent academic third-party evaluation on the work that I’m promising this community is going to make a difference in our community.

8:48 – Mayor Melvin Carter

But this has to be about getting it right, not being right. And so that’s why we’re doing this. That’s why we’re committed to this. That researcher, he starts saying stuff like the Saint Paul way. And the Saint Paul way is helping to facilitate both income and asset building at the same time.

9:07 – Mayor Melvin Carter

There’s this grand debate over whether the answer is income or whether the answer is asset building. Hopefully, all of your bankers are making good money, and they’re putting something in a 401k.

9:18 [LAUGHTER]

9:20 – Mayor Melvin Carter

And helping them build assets. The two have to go hand in hand. So that’s what we’re doing together. That you asked me what success looks like. And that’s an important thing though. Because this isn’t just about putting 50 bucks in the bank. And coming back 20 years from now to see how we did.

9:35 – Mayor Melvin Carter

We’re the first city to launch college savings accounts initiative that starts at birth. It features universal automatic enrollment at birth. We’re excited about that. And what it does is it gives the opportunity.

9:48 – Mayor Melvin Carter

One of the things I’ve heard from kindergarten teachers all across the state in my former role. Was their frustration at what they call kindergarten surprises.

9:56 – Mayor Melvin Carter

The number of children who show up at five years old who nobody knew they were coming and have these severe delays that our kindergarten teacher swear we could have done something about it. If we had known that child was out there.

10:06 – Mayor Melvin Carter

That’s so unacceptable David. Those children are on child care. Those children are awake. Those children in our libraries. Those children in our rec centers. And here we are saying, oh we didn’t know those children were out there. So, we didn’t get a chance to start them.

10:18 – Mayor Melvin Carter

The most exciting thing about college bound Saint Paul is for $50 a month. It does all that other stuff I just discussed. But it also gives us a vehicle right at birth to begin building that connection and begin building that relationship with our children.

10:32 – Mayor Melvin Carter

I believe that we’ll be able to leverage this vehicle not just to improve 20 years from now the number of our kids who are in college in pursuit of post-secondary education. But to improve the number of children in just a couple of years who will be walking into kindergarten ready to learn.

10:46 – David Reiling

Yeah, that’s fantastic. And I give you great credit. And I have heard from some of my colleagues around the country as to what’s going on in Saint Paul? Which is so great to hear?

10:56 – Mayor Melvin Carter

Is that right?

10:57 – David Reiling

So being a business in Saint Paul saying, you have this college savings account. What’s going on there? My mayor was asking, or my city council was inquiring. And so, you just got to know from my lens, and my perspective. I’m proud of what you’re doing.

11:11 – David Reiling

And leading that way in terms of equity and particularly in regard to obviously, there’s an early childhood development piece of this, as well as the post-secondary.

11:20 – David Reiling

Now you mentioned one thing that I was really interested about because you just released a new budget with the city. And I was told by a nun one time, I was growing up in a Catholic school.

11:33 – David Reiling

She said something to the effect that where you spend your money is where your values are. And I interpreted that as a budget. Whether it’s a government budget or a business or a personal budget reflects one’s values.

11:45 – David Reiling

And in the new city budget you made a special allocation to libraries. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

11:53 – Mayor Melvin Carter

Absolutely, you’re right. Our mantra in our administration is if your budget doesn’t reflect your values, then they’re not really your values. Because your budget does reflect your values no matter what you say or no matter what you tweet.

12:03 – Mayor Melvin Carter

Since the beginning of time, as far back as I can read in my history books, libraries have been the icon of free democratic access to information. We’ve messed some of that up. But we’re trying to unravel some of that.

12:17 – Mayor Melvin Carter

In my first budget as mayor, we eliminated late fines in our libraries. So that the 50,000 Saint Paul families whose landing privileges were revoked then for as little as $10 in late fees. That late fines dating back 10 years. Now you’ve got some accounts receivable folks who work with you guys. $10 from 10 years ago. Let’s not waste our time.

12:37 [LAUGHTER]

12:38 – Mayor Melvin Carter

Right?

12:38 – David Reiling

Exactly–

12:39 – Mayor Melvin Carter

And so, there’s an allowance for a doubtful account somewhere in there. And so, I tell folks like this was a really hard policy to make until we realized we actually do want children to read.

12:50 – Mayor Melvin Carter

And as a result of that policy, we saw double digit increases in library use in all of our lowest income neighborhoods.

12:59 – Mayor Melvin Carter

So, we’re trying to redefine what a library is in our community through find free libraries, through a program called read brave, through which we invite people to get together and read about issues of our day, and to grow our consciousness together.

13:13 – Mayor Melvin Carter

We’ve hired social workers to embed in our libraries. So that our librarians can’t just connecting people to encyclopedia Britannica. They’re connecting people to like everyday today resources that can help them succeed.

13:25 – Mayor Melvin Carter

And so different steps like that. So yes, we’re investing heavily in our libraries, we’re going to continue to double down. Because as Justice Page said, educational access is clearly a key.

13:37 – Mayor Melvin Carter

Now you and I both know there are still disparities at play. That there are still kind of challenges that face African-American men, for example with a bachelor’s degree that don’t necessarily face white men with a bachelor’s degree.

13:49 – Mayor Melvin Carter

So, we have to take some of those challenges head on. But it does start. I fundamentally believe with access to education, access to information and the type of resources we can provide through our libraries and our schools.

14:02 – David Reiling

Yeah. In such a long-standing asset of the community or institutional library is. But to re-imagine it into bringing in social workers and to bring in other resources in there such that the library is re-imagine and it’s a place to go for knowledge and help and support.

14:18 – David Reiling

It almost to me seems like duh why didn’t we think of this before?

14:23 – Mayor Melvin Carter

So, it’s so obvious when you and I are growing up, libraries are designed to be places for books.

14:28 – David Reiling

Yes.

14:28 – Mayor Melvin Carter

That’s so such an obvious mistake. But I’m really proud we have got an incredible. And I think the St Paul public library is as good as anybody, we are redefining those spaces as spaces for people. And it’s a fundamentally different set of decisions. But it’s exciting.

14:42 – David Reiling

Yeah. So, let me just take in a different direction now. Because I was listening to a Minnesota Public Radio podcast. And there was a quote in there where I believe you said that you were raised to be a problem solver and find ways to take responsibility.

14:57 – David Reiling

And so, this passion around equity. What was it in your upbringing that drove you to focus on equity as a key focus in your time in the city council, and as mayor?

15:11 – Mayor Melvin Carter

It’s a good question. I grew up here in Saint Paul. And I grew up around some just incredibly brilliant people. And David if you got a chance to meet some of the young people who I grew up with at Central High School and in our public schools and our neighborhoods and in the rec centers, you wouldn’t think I was all that sharp.

15:32 [LAUGHTER]

15:33 – Mayor Melvin Carter

Because I’d just grown up around some incredible people. And some of those people who I spent my entire life fascinated by and amazed by, just weren’t able to find a place in this world.

15:46 – Mayor Melvin Carter

I visited one of my closest friends in life, who had a nervous breakdown. Literally two weeks after he graduated high school and has never been the same ever since.

15:58 – Mayor Melvin Carter

And I have to process a lot of frustration. That not only that I’ve seen really incredible people. Seem like they get swallowed up by sets of circumstances that are outside their doing, that are outside of their control. I get frustrated by the amount of human potential that we let go to waste in our community.

16:26 – Mayor Melvin Carter

And even more so by the somewhat– sometimes it seems the random distribution. You don’t understand how or exactly why. But then you zoom out, and it’s not random at all. It’s very predictable.

16:39 – Mayor Melvin Carter

We still live in a city where we can predict the child’s expected life outcome more accurately based on her race and her zip code, than based on her GPA. And that’s not enough. That’s not enough for me, it’s not enough for my kids. It’s not enough for your kids. It’s not enough for our regional economy.

16:54 – Mayor Melvin Carter

And for me Saint Paul can and should be so much more than what we’ve historically been. I know there are some of us who change is uncomfortable for anybody.

17:07 – Mayor Melvin Carter

So, as we’ve driven the ball pretty hard on change toward equity, I know it makes a lot of folks in our community uncomfortable.

17:15 – Mayor Melvin Carter

But here’s the thing, the biggest and brightest and best Saint Paul, wasn’t in the 70s. It wasn’t in the 60s. It wasn’t in the 80s. It wasn’t in the 90s. I fundamentally believe it’s in front of us. And I can’t wait to get us there.

17:28 – David Reiling

That’s fantastic. So, I’ll narrow you down, particularly to the audience in terms of the bankers who are listening. And one of the circumstances that we face as bankers, but as really as a community is the disconnect between banks and bankers and communities that we would call underserved at the moment.

17:52 – David Reiling

And that fundamental lack of trust or really the barrier of that’s not a place for me. When you think of banks and trust in that relationships, and those roadblocks, how can banks build trust and be an engine for good in their community and try to break that down?

18:12 – Mayor Melvin Carter

I think it’s about adding value. I always hate it when people say there’s two kinds of people in this world. But that notwithstanding. There’s two kinds of people in this world. There are those who money works for, and there are those who money works against

18:29 – Mayor Melvin Carter

And that’s a space where we’ve seen incredible and enormous disparities. Just two years ago, when we saw the world explode in the protest over the murder of George Floyd, I fundamentally believe that wasn’t just about police brutality.

18:44 – Mayor Melvin Carter

That wasn’t just about police killings. That was about all of the frustration that exists on the planet. About all of the ways people of color, and particularly Black and Brown Americans, look and can see these systems that are supposed to be protecting us.

19:01 – Mayor Melvin Carter

That are supposed to be helping us raise our children and helping us pass this baton to our next generations in a stronger space.

19:10 – Mayor Melvin Carter

And feel like they have their knee on our neck. Right. That’s not just our law enforcement and public safety systems. That’s our financial system. That’s our political systems. That’s our health care systems. That’s our employment systems. It’s that our housing. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

19:24 – Mayor Melvin Carter

And so, I think the future of banking is helping to identify whereas it’s historically. I think been competing internally to identify the folks who money is working for and try to get them over here. Trying to get them to move from one institution to the next. And the future of banking.

19:46 – Mayor Melvin Carter

And maybe the largest enterprise or emerging market on the horizon for you, and for the industry. Is probably all the people for whom money has worked against them. All the people who are still putting money in jars. All the people who are still banking at pawnshops and same day Lenders, that are sucking the life out of our communities.

20:08 – Mayor Melvin Carter

Financially speaking, helping them figure out how to connect those individuals to responsive responsible financial products that can help them build their life forward. I think that’s really exciting that some of the work we’re trying to facilitate through our office of financial empowerment.

20:26 – Mayor Melvin Carter

How do we make sure that people who work at a business can buy that business, whether that’s individually or whether that’s a cooperative model?

20:32 – Mayor Melvin Carter

How do we make sure that people who pay more to rent a smaller place every month without gaining wealth, can get over that hump to become homeowners and start to accumulate the wealth that so many of us do through home ownership?

20:46 – Mayor Melvin Carter

How do we facilitate people saving for college? Saving for retirement. How do we facilitate those types of steps? So that we give your employees and all your bankers who work for you a whole lot more work to do. Because we’ve got a whole lot more customers in Saint Paul than you have anywhere else.

21:03 – David Reiling

Which is great a bank should be eager to take advantage of that. Let me tease it out for you and the NextGen banker question here at the end. And that is, I’m going to call it from your seat as mayor, but really personally, what do you see as, what does the next generation banker look like?

21:24 – Mayor Melvin Carter

Wow. That’s of all the people working on this podcast and listening to this podcast and probably the hands down least qualified person to say that. So, it’s just to answer that question. So, let’s just acknowledge that upfront.

21:38 – Mayor Melvin Carter

I think if a banker is a public servant. If a banker wakes up every morning to help people make money work for them, for their families, for their businesses for their lives, for their careers, for their ideas, and help people leverage finances as a building block to their life dreams. I think that’s what a banker is.

22:14 – Mayor Melvin Carter

Our community in particular in Saint Paul we are so much more diverse. We are so much more international. We are so much more multicultural or so much more multilingual than we used to be.

22:24 – Mayor Melvin Carter

That the first part of that question has to be, I think taken literally. And that is bringing more diverse individuals into the field so that we can connect with that kind of broader more diverse set of folks.

22:37 – Mayor Melvin Carter

We have been reported as having the most diverse cabinet in city history. And people say how did you do that.

22:46 – Mayor Melvin Carter

And it’s a funny question to me, because if you just think about probability and statistics, our city is diverse. You don’t really have to do something special to get a diverse cabinet. You have to do something to not get a diverse cabinet.

23:00 – Mayor Melvin Carter

And so, the way that we did that was we engaged people in our community to be a part of that process. And so, all that say is, I think the first part of the question is physically what does the new banker look like? They’ve got to look like our community. They’ve got to be able to talk like our community.

23:15 – Mayor Melvin Carter

They’ve got to be able to speak in the languages, whether that’s the sort of tongues or that’s like the cultural languages of our community to be able to connect Sunrise Banks and all of our other financial institutions to the products that you provide.

23:28 – Mayor Melvin Carter

So, I’ve always been a fan of sunrise and some of the products that you guys do to help people fix their credits. To help people establish credits. To people build their lives. It feels like above and beyond what I see regular quote unquote regular banks doing.

23:42 – Mayor Melvin Carter

And so, I always appreciate the way you guys facilitate that. But then the bigger thing for me is what do you do. And that’s a challenge for us. Because one that my challenge is to my cabinet is, we can’t just provide great stuff inside the library and say, well, it was there, if people wanted it.

24:04 – Mayor Melvin Carter

We can’t just have police officers sitting and waiting for something bad to happen and say well, they could have called 911. We can’t just say we provided a service and people failed to access it.

24:17 – Mayor Melvin Carter

It’s got to be about maybe my shortest answer is, I think the new age banker has got to have real worn out shoes. They got to be out in community. They got to be beyond the computer screen, beyond the doors.

24:31 – Mayor Melvin Carter

They got to be out there talking to people and engaging people, and really finding people, and helping bring–

24:38 – Mayor Melvin Carter

We talk about the $100 cover charge to go to target. I walk in a target, and they figure out how to put everything I could possibly need on my path right on my pathway.

24:49 – Mayor Melvin Carter

And they solve problems I didn’t even realize I had before I parked the car and walked in there. That’s the type of approach that I would love to see our new age bankers take to connecting all of our residents and all of our neighborhoods to prosperity.

25:05 – David Reiling

Well, that is a fantastic answer. I love the nuggets of that being proactive and in service of others. That being a banker in some respects is being that public servant, but one that engages proactively.

25:22 – David Reiling

So, mayor, I want to thank you for several things. Being with us today for one. But also, for your leadership in regard to equity. It is so near and dear to my heart. But it’s so important for not only our community in Saint Paul and the greater Twin Cities, but nationally as well.

25:37 – David Reiling

So please know what you’re doing is having an impact. I think more than nationally. I think it’s having an impact around the world. So, thank you again.

25:46 – Mayor Melvin Carter

I already said it David. But I think it bears repeating to me. And this is my challenge for everybody who’s committed to equity, is to shift beyond. Like how do we do more for that community, or how to do more for those children in those families, to what I said earlier.

26:00 – Mayor Melvin Carter

To me the question is, how do we engage when we identify a community that we think we want to serve better in neighborhood or family? The first question is, how do we engage them to know that they’re stakeholder owners of our bank or our city or our business or a nonprofit or institution? Whatever it is.

26:16 – Mayor Melvin Carter

The second thing is as stakeholder owners if they really are. And how do we engage more members from that community as decision making partners in the decisions that we make around the products that we serve around, the different court decisions that we make around how we serve our public.

26:33 – Mayor Melvin Carter

And I think those two steps alone, are the key. I think without those two steps; you won’t be able to achieve that third piece that I mentioned. And that real shared economy where people are really benefiting from the work that you do.

26:48 – Mayor Melvin Carter

And I think David if families and businesses and community members and nonprofits start to tell each other at the beauty shop, and start to tell each other at the barber shop, and at the coffee shop, I’m better off. My business is better off.

27:02 – Mayor Melvin Carter

Because of what Sunrise is doing. Then the messaging will take care of itself.

27:08 – David Reiling

Yeah. Well, thank you for those insights and wisdom. And one thing that I wake up every day and is the only reason the bank is successful is our customers are successful. Our community is successful. And so, what you said so eloquently there is so true in the engagement of all those involved in the broader stakeholders.

27:26 – David Reiling

Mayor Carter, thank you so much for joining us today.

27:29 – Mayor Melvin Carter

Thanks for having me on.

27:29 [MUSIC PLAYING]

27:32 – Becca Hoeft

For this episode’s musical feature, we’re showcasing Adrian Walther. Walther creates new songs using minimal piano and acoustic guitars. Throughout his catalog, you’ll always find an emotional theme. Here is “Wherever You Are” By Adrienne Walther featuring Jessie Villa.

27:51 [MUSIC PLAYING]

28:51 – Becca Hoeft

That was “Wherever You Are” by Adrian Walther featuring Jessie Villa. Find more of Adrian Walther’s music on Spotify. If you would like your music featured on the NextGen Baker podcast, just email David@nextgen-banker.com with a link to your music and website.

29:09 – Becca Hoeft

Thanks for listening to the NextGen Banker podcast. We’ll see you next time.