We're feeding the line. We're getting people food. But importantly, we're shortening the line. Food insecurity is not about food. Food insecurity is about poverty. Indiana University football is going to win a national [music] championship and go undefeated.
Sounds like you pulled a bunch of random things out of a hat and you're like, "Ah, no way that ever happens." It's a fool's game to try to chase acceptance. I need to look in the mirror and be confident I did the right thing. Why [music] the mission and the work that Gleaners is doing is so important to the Hooser State. From South Bend to Evansville and everywhere in between, this is Get In, the show focused on the Hooser State and the incredible stories happening here today. I'm Nate Spangle, founder of Get Indiana, and I will be your host for today's conversation.
Before we dive into today's episode, a quick shout out to our friends at NCW, the team that's been building one of the fastest growing staffing and recruiting companies in America for over 25 years. They specialize in the skilled trades. But here's the thing, they're also growing their own internal team. If you or someone you know is interested in recruiting sales or just making businesses run smoother, you'll want to check them out at teamncw. com. This is just another job pitch.
[music] NCW has been voted a top workplace by the indie star, landed on the IBJ Fast25 list, and made the Inc. 5000 list multiple times. I'll [music] tell you, I've got plenty of friends who work there and they all love it. Go check out teamncw. com. Now, let's get into the episode.
My guest today is [music] Fred Glass and he is the president and CEO of Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana where he oversees the state's [music] largest hunger relief organization helping provide millions of meals each year to Hoosiers across the state. Now before joining Gleaners, Fred built a remarkable legacy in law, civic leadership, higher education, athletics. He has done so many things uh from his humble beginnings here uh in in the back of a dive bar here in Indianapolis. I'm so excited. I I said this before. I'm about I don't know eight or 10 chapters into his book.
It is incredible. The legacy that you've built, the things that you've done. I'm so excited to dive into one your journey to IU Bloomington to your time as the athletic director and all the things you did in Bloomington to the state house to government civic politics and then now talking about what you're doing at Gleaners. This is going to be uh an absolutely electric episode and I have to give a shout out early on. I have to give a shout out to Tom Asi for helping set this up and make it happen. Um, I met him through Penrod.
He's been awesome in getting this facilitated. So, Fred, welcome to the show. Well, thanks man. I'm grateful to be on the show and I'm really grateful for what you do cuz I'm a shameless Homer Indianapolis guy. Deep roots in the state and the way you celebrate so much positivity going on in Indiana and shining a light on all the interesting stories. It's it's a real gem for us and grateful for it.
Well, you might not know this, but without you, I would not have gotten a an amazing mentor in my life and previous guest of the show, and this is going to be a funny spin on this, and I'm eager to hear your take on it, but I uh was a football player at Depal University, and I graduated in 2019. And so, hadn't decisions at Indiana University not been made about uh the future of uh my coach, Bill Lynch, he never would have ended up in my life at DEPA. So, it's funny how worlds start to collide there and professional careers end up making impacts uh for ripples and years further on down the road, which is always fun. Yeah, it is funny, man, because uh you know, something that seems like there's a Chinese farmer story about uh you know, some looks like bad news, but it turns out to be good news, right? And and Bill Lynch is one of my favorite people in the world. Great family, great coach.
He was put in I think an an untenable situation. I had to make a tough decision, but I think it was ultimately uh best for IU football and best for Bill and then all the great things he went on to to do and you're a great example of that. So, I'm I'm glad to hear that feedback. Yeah, I I always thought that was funny as I was going through and learning all the things I was like, wait a second, the paths, that's the Indiana thing. There are the invisible strings that connect literally everyone to everyone. and your invisible strings start at a dive bar on Washington Street in downtown Indianapolis where you grew up as a young kid seeing the ins and outs of the city of Indianapolis, the state of Indiana and the people that would frequent this third space being the the dive bar, the I believe the the book says from a a tavern on Skid Row in Indianapolis to end up, you know, becoming the athletic director at IU.
Talk to me about how impactful getting to see different perspectives, different viewpoints, different people, and different walks of life through your dad's bar here in downtown Indianapolis. How impactful that was on your life. No, thanks for uh thanks for bringing that up. And just a an exclamation point on the on the Bill Lynch thing um and the uh and the connectivity. Bill Lynch when he was a football player at Butler was the playground guard at St. Thomas Aquinus when I was a kid playing there.
So, it's uh it's it's very much, you know, uh around world. Um yeah, so my dad bought uh what became George's Liberty Bar at the corner of Eastn Washington Street uh when I was about 5 years old. Um that was and and and really sort of is Skid Row certainly as you go out uh East Washington Street to the county line. And I hated it. You know, my friends were doing uh you know uh normal stuff and I was growing up in the back of the Skidro bar. I'm an only child.
It was a family business and so that's where I was. Um, but looking back on it, it's probably the best thing that ever happened to me in terms of my perspective and development and and connectivity with people because people that I think normally get are dismissed as as as bums or street people or whatever. I got to know them. I sat in the booths of the tavern with them and I heard their stories and I knew their names. I saw my dad interacting with them. He was a rough and tumble kind of guy.
Didn't talk about scripture or anything like that, but he lived it. You know, he was feeding the hungry. He was clothing the naked. He was housing the homeless and really creating community for those folks. So, uh, as an only child and our my grandparents were all gone, we didn't have holiday dinners at our house or anything like that. We had them at the tavern.
Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter. Uh my dad would have uh meals with all the trimmings because on Skid Row the loneliest day of the week is Sunday when the taverns are closed and and the loneliest of those are are holidays. Um and and and I just I grew up uh with that. Um and and and looking back it was it was a great gift to have that kind of upbringing. One it's like hindsight's 2020, right? I think in the moment you're like, well, why can't we be like a normal family and go get dinner at grandma's or Aunt Carol's house and hang out and eat pie and play board games, but then you also start to see how easy it becomes to judge, right?
Like you're driving to your Christmas dinner on a Sunday and you see someone walking into the local bar and you're like, "Oh man, like that poor sucker." And then you realize like you don't know the past, the circumstances that have brought them there where that might be the only community they have. That might be the dinner. that might be the place where they can talk to someone else and find some friendship of people that might be going through similar situations. And I think that's something that um is lost on a lot of people in 2026 is varying perspectives. Your social media algorithm or whatever it is is so uh tuned into feeding you more of what you like and more of the same thoughts and you know reaffirming whatever you believe and you know being young and getting to see different experiences.
I also think this is my only child perspective. I'm also an only child and when you're put into situations where you have to talk to adults at a young age, it helps versus when you have, again, like I think it would be really cool to have siblings and grow up in a big family, that's awesome. But you have like built-in kids to talk to. When it's like you're sitting there and you're at the bar and there's no other kids and it's like, well, I can either twiddle my thumbs or I can talk to old Mo who's been a regular for 30 years. like you're going to learn how to talk to adults and then I think that that does translate to helping in the career later on down the road because when you're 22, you've already been talking to an adult your entire life. Absolutely right.
And you know, if you're an only child, you grow up in an adult family. You do adult things. You're in adult conversations. You're part of an adult family. And as soon as there's another sibling, then it then the balance of power shifts to the kids. And I always kind of wanted that, you know, and I've got four kids because I wanted a bigger family.
Um, but yeah, I think you're exactly right about about that and also about this bubble, you know, where the algorithms feed us what they think we want to hear and and probably we demonstrate we want to hear and we when we we and we tend to uh um socialize with people of similar views and all that and there's not as many opportunities um to uh break out of that and consider other perspectives and I was forced into that at the tavern and it it was it was awesome though, man. I mean, I I I didn't like it. But then there were things like my dad coached our CYO football team and on Sundays when the tavern was closed, we'd go up there and the 15 of us, cuz we were a small school, would sit at the bar in our cadet uniforms and eat peanuts and drink Cokes and and and I remember one time we were there and my friend goes, "What what's your what's your dad doing? Why is he beating that bunny with a baseball bat?"
And uh and he was killing a rat uh behind the bar with a baseball bat. And it's like he, you know, he assumed it was a bunny cuz, you know, he didn't have rats in his uh life, but there, you know, and I saw my dad like just pull out his blackjack and beat a guy that was like u messing with people at at the bar. And so when you're 8 years old and you see your dad in a fist fight, you know, it it reorients your thinking. Um this is something you may I think you know about from the book. And um I don't I don't hide from it. My dad was an awesome guy.
uh like a lot of us, package deal and flawed and he was a bad alcoholic. Yeah. And so I didn't like growing up in the bar. Um and I didn't like growing up as the child of an alcoholic. And and you have an interesting take there where you didn't realize that your dad was an alcoholic until he was diagnosed with cancer and your mom said it was probably his alcoholism and you were like confused by that. Yeah.
It's so weird, man. I remember exactly where I was when she said that to me. We were on Meridian Street right by the World War Memorial and she said, "Well, you know, your dad's an alcoholic and I was, you know, 20." Um, and it never really hit me, but but then it was all like, "Yeah, it's like almost maybe like the rosecolored glasses or whatever it is, like the fog lifts and you're like, "Shit." Yeah. Wait, duh.
Yeah, exactly. When you're going through that, you you're I mean, just from again the stories that I've read through the book is is incredible perspective that was gained. So, you're you're on East Washington Street, the corner of East and Washington, right down like in the mile square. My dad was very proud that his bar was in the mile square, just barely, but he was in the mile square. And then he ends up getting out of the Liberty Bar and moving up College Avenue to 42nd in College, which I looked up today is like the fire station, a library, and I'm not really Is that like a church building or whatever? Where was it at on College?
That's where the library is now. He bought Lead and Joe's and and renamed it George's Uptown Tavern. And and um and that was during my high school years. And uh and that and that led to certain you know uh [clears throat] monkey business which was which was which was fun you know. I mean dude this what what year are you going through high school? I graduated from Buff in 1977.
It's like this is the 70s. Your dad owns a bar and he would be uh I would say I'm I'm sure uh busy doing you know whatever bar owners do and and bar patrons. You guys talk about the Red Key Tavern being like a favorite where if you had to go look for him, you'd check Red Key at 52nd in college and it's like, well, hey, if I was a high school kid and there was an unlimited supply of beer, I'd probably figure out how to get it out of the bar, too. You know, we did a little bit of that um for for first couple years when I was at Burbuff. I'd get up with my dad every morning, drive the tavern, I'd sweep it and mop it um and then hitchhike to Burbuff. And hitchhiking was just a lot more common then.
And and uh and like are you serious? Like you just get catch a random ride. Mhm. Yeah. I just fill out my thumb and hitchhike to uh to Burbuff, which is, you know, at 86 and and uh Ditch Road or something. And people would stop and pick you up.
Was it like the same people usually sometimes, but you know, when you had your Burbuff bag, um people just kind of did it and it was very fairly common. I hitchhiked a lot when I was kid. I hitchhiked back and forth from Bloomington all the time. What? Yeah. I hitchhiked to Glendale.
Um that was just that was that was part of it. But every morning that was my mode of transportation. And I may or may not have uh liberated a few bottles of um cherry vodka from the tavern and sold them at for a little pocket change because you know Yeah. guy had to have a little bit to get around with a little walking around money. Right. It's interesting you as a parent today.
Did you think about when you had children that were coming through of like getting them diverse experiences? Obviously, no parent wants to generate adversity for their child, but like there's also a piece of it that shapes who you can be. And I'm curious as someone who had a um had some adversity in your upbringing, how that affected how you parented going forward. That's a great observation, Nate. and and and and I did have challenges, you know. Um we, you know, my dad was an alcoholic.
Um money was tight. Um there were times in the winter where we were uh our oil got cut off cuz dad couldn't pay for the oil and we we had the the uh burners on the stove to to stay warm and all that kind of stuff. Um now having said that, I had a lot of wind at my back too. Okay. Both my parents went to college. Um, I wasn't discriminated against based on the color of my skin or who I loved.
Um, [snorts] so I don't I don't take that for granted. I had a lot of I had a lot of wind at my back. It's like both can be true, right? Like uh I think that's an interesting piece where it's like there's like some some like invisible line in the sand of like you either had an adverse upbringing or you had it easy. like and it's like well everyone has their own challenges at varying scales and you don't know again like someone who might have two doctors as parents and like you don't know what it's happening behind closed doors there and I just think that the world is a lot more complex than than a lot of times it's made out to be where it's you're either you either had a poor upbringing or you were rich you know and it's like who do you know that sits on either one of those sides all the time. No, that's 100% 100% right.
We like to put people in nice little categories and the fact of the matter is um we're all kind of like I said package deals and and uh buckets of different experiences. But but my wife and I and she grew up at um in modest means. She's one of six kids. Her dad was a public servant. Neither one of them went to college. Again, you know, had had a lot of uh positives, too.
We would say, you know, we we believe that one of the things that made us strong was growing up in a way where we had to hustle to survive a little bit and and have have empathy for people that didn't have as much. And my kids were blessed to come up, you know, as more in a family of some means. Um, but to me the key was making them work. Being a waitress, work in a parking lot, retail, learn about people, learn about the value of of making money. I think that's been the great equalizer to make sure they have that kind of experience. Yeah, I think that's an that's important because again, it's so easy to be a parent and you're like, well, I want to I want to give the world to my children, which you should, right?
Like you want their lives to be better than yours. On the other side, again, this is also spoken as someone who's not a parent. I have no idea what I'm talking about on that. But I just think from the outside, it's like every parent, it seems as though wants their kids' life to be better than theirs. But also on the other side, it's like so easy that every time there's a problem, you just solve it. Like if you're a fixer, you see a problem, bad grade, this, that, whatever the thing might be.
There's a lot of lessons that come out of like, hey, I love you, and because I love you, you got to figure this out, right? And I don't I think that is something that is it's so interesting to see when you talk to people that have uh different backgrounds. Well, I mean again you grew up in a bar setting. You talk about like I mean there's a story in the book where you talk about uh the regulars would leave money on the floor for you to pick up and that would be like your pocket change, you know, go this is for Freddy here's a couple bucks and like that's just not the experience that most I would say today in 2026 Brebuff Cathedral K like that's not the experience that they have. It's super unique. You continue to stack up interesting and unique experiences.
Somewhere along the journey, you decide that law is going to be what you want to go into. What made you want to be a lawyer? I'd like to say it was some altruistic thing, but like I really dug um Perry Mason and Jud for the defense and read Eley Bailey's book and to Killy Mockingbird. And I just thought, you know, for for somebody that didn't like math and science um and liked writing, I thought being a lawyer would be a a cool thing to do. and and and my dad who flunked out of law school uh told encouraged me to go to law school and and uh my wife doesn't like it when I make this analogy, but my dad always said getting a law degree is like having a plumbers's license. It's a trade that nobody can take away from you.
you you own the means of your livelihood, you know, and and that's been a really impactful thing for me because I've had this echlectic career, you know, where I've gone here and and and gone there and and and and part of the reason I think I've had the willingness to do that is because I knew I had that ticket. I I had that license. If all the wheels fell off and this didn't work out, I could I could put my shingle out and and carve out a living. It's like a great safety blanket. It's like at the end of the day, someone is someone someone is always going to need someone to look at contracts to be in law. Like there's no shortage of jobs for a good lawyer.
So take a risk, take a a weird interesting path because again, if everything goes to heck, you still have something to fall back on. That is I like that analogy. I think that's pretty good. So you decide to go to the law path uh along that journey. I think again I'm going to keep referencing the book a little bit, but you talk about meeting your wife, your eventual wife, realizing that she liked guys that weren't into her. So, you know, you got to like play a little paid attention, man.
You got to play hard to get, but you end up giving her the rock at the boulder or the rock at the rock, right? Yeah. The rock on the rock. Yeah. Uh and get you propose in Brown County. You guys get married and your life kind of starts to, you know, come together there.
take me through early days career. How do you end up getting to become the athletic director at at IU and how did how do you get into that opportunity? I want to talk kind of that journey and then also talk through the political side of things and you end up as chief of staff down in the state house. Right. So, you know, we talked about uh stories and there's there's I I love stories and and I've got uh some stories, so you may have to re me in. the producer may have to come in and hit me or something, but um when when I was in Bloomington, I was a junior and I was always interested in government and politics and Birb was a hero of mine and and I read all kinds of political biographies and and thought that I wanted to maybe get involved in politics at some point.
So late in my uh junior year, I went down to see my counselor at this student building. your IU folks will know it's on the old part of campus, this idealic uh clock tower and went in and told her, "Hey, I I want to try to get a internship in DC this summer." And she basically said, "Well, you know, you're an idiot because it's March and you know, it's too late to try to get something for the summer, which was extremely typical of me at the time. You know, I'm not thinking ahead." Um, procrastinator, procrastinator, ignoring my comfort zone. So she said, "But uh in the fall, Burch Bay, uh who's the chair of the subcommittee on the Constitution, holds a place for kids from Indiana to serve so they don't all go to GW and Georgetown people and stuff."
Um and you you could you could apply for that. And um I go, "Okay." You know, so I walk out, my girlfriend's waiting there for me. She goes, "Well, how'd it go?" I go, "Well, it's this isn't happening. You know, the summer thing is going to work.
They've got this thing in the fall. I don't want to do that. I don't want to miss my senior year uh in the fall in Bloomington and I, you know, I wouldn't be able to catch up on my credits and and all that. And and I could just feel my comfort zone wafting back over me, which I liked. I had a very fun college career spent mostly in my comfort zone, you know. Um and my girlfriend goes, "Um, well, wait a minute.
I thought you wanted to be a lawyer and you'd like Birch B and you could you could go to summer school to catch up on your credits and then still go in the fall. And you know that really pissed me off because I'm like where's the where's the reinforcement to you know stay here and do the easy thing. So to make a fairly long story short I ended up applying for that uh internship. I got it. I [snorts] went to DC and everything I've done since really I tie back to that a um I got involved with the Bay family um worked for Birb then I ended up working for Evan Bay and now my son's working for Bob which is an interesting uh bookend um but even more importantly I got the confidence that I could do this because to me and this may sound funny in these times but to me back Then Washington was this magical place where magical people did magical things. There was like some special knowledge, ability, whatever that enabled people to to do to do these things.
And when I got there, I'm like there I could do that. There are people like me. I could do that. Yeah. I mean, they talk about this in lots of different careers, not just politic politics, but also if you grow up and you're never exposed to Hollywood or podcasting or technology, then you're like, "Oh, those people are way smarter than me. They put their pants on a different way."
Like, you can your imagination kind of runs wild on all the things that other people can do. and you're just in your bubble, in your comfort zone, knowing, well, you know, my my parents went to college and then ran a small business or my parents did this and I'm going to become a lawyer and I'll fight DUI cases or whatever it is, you know, and then one experience, one fall that you that a girlfriend pushed you over the edge to, right, ends up making a huge impact in your life because you start to see that anything is possible. Like truthfully like I always it's like this selft talk that I have where it's like oh if somebody figured that out I can probably figure that out. Like granted I'm not like a I can't do brain surgery. I'm not like a technical wizard programmer but like the average person if they're like figuring out how to build a company or they're figuring out how to run an ultramarathon or whatever.
I'm like I could probably do that. Like so and so does that. Like they put their pants on the same way. Like let's go out and get it. And uh I think that is a a piece that I love about do you know Providence Crystal Ray High School where they're taking uh and giving realworld like white collar type job like office job exposure to kids that might never seen that before. And how awesome is that where they start to make connections and see that like oh I could go be an accountant or I could be an HR or I could do these different things.
Like that's a little bit of just modeling and seeing it is super important. No, you're 100% right. And we have a we have a a Providence Chrystal Chris Ray student at Cleaners and really she does a great job and we're glad to have it. But it's the old you got to see it to be it. And a lot of us take it for granted that we see people and we have friends whose parents are doctors and lawyers and entrepreneurs and all this, but a lot of people just don't have that uh exposure. And that was certainly my experience with that clerkship.
And and I'd like to add that uh that that my girlfriend has been my wife now for 44 years. There we go. and she still pisses me off um in in terms of uh very appropriately challenging me. You know, there's a thing with clergy that I think is good in marriages too that you need to uh uh comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. And so, um um she's been um a a critical part of what I've done because I think we we in addition to loving each other hold each other accountable. Yeah.
That was a quote that you heard from someone that made a big impact up, correct? Yeah. Yeah. Father O'Brien. Yeah. Yeah, you you got a you got a rock solid memory.
Yes, sir. So, wait, say that again. Disturb disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. Yeah, that is great. Like it it does charge you again. You have said it.
The comfort zone is your happy place, you know, like if you could just live life in the comfort if we could all live life in the comfort zone, I feel like, you know, people would enjoy that. But that growth does come when you take on new experiences and try different things. And I mean whether it's I don't know like when people I feel like the usual one that people start with is like they get into running like yeah you know what I'm going to get out of my comfort zone. I'm going to run a 5K or run half marathon do the indie mini and it's like that's like the gateway drug of how are you pushing yourself out of your comfort zone with your education. You know you become 30 years old and am I still reading books? Am I still questioning things?
Am I still wondering and and in awe of the world? I think that's what's so cool about uh a bunch of my friends now have young kids and you get to see them experience their first the first time they have a hot dog at a drive-in at like you know on the lake. It's like it's so magical to see first and then you get to be in your 30s and first stop. It's like oh I've done I've done it all. I've seen it all. There's no new first for me.
And that's just what I mean that's why I've been loving this book or loving just reading, hosting a podcast, doing all those things in general are how do you get to experience more firsts later into your life and I think uh yeah getting out of the comfort zone for you change your life. You go to DC and then how does that end up coming into a career that I mean maybe what seven or eight years later you end up as the chief of staff for the governor. Yeah. So I came back uh decided to go to law school. always wanted to go to law school. Uh went here in uh Indianapolis.
Um I was getting ready to graduate and I had a job offer at Ice Miller, which is, you know, one of the big law firms, making a bunch of money. All my friends were salesman and stuff. They had all kinds of money and I didn't have anything. We lived downtown, not because it was cool, but because it was cheap. I had like a 600 foot apartment. I walked to school um and and all that.
So, I was like, "Hey, this is going to be awesome." And then at the last minute, I applied for this uh judicial clerkship working for a federal district court judge. Um and and this will date me. It it was a literally a 3x5 card on a bulletin board uh that said, "I'm looking for a law clerk. Uh needed to be uh in the top 10% of your class law review and have a working knowledge of Indiana University basketball," which intrigued me. And this judge Dylan, he was like this iconic judge, blah blah blah.
So I applied for it. I didn't think I was going to get it because those clerkships went to these kind of eggheheady, you know, academic types and I really wasn't that. But um I I I did get it. Um and he gave me like he called me like way after he was supposed to and and said, "Hey, I want you to do this." And I go, "Well, yeah, I thought I thought you know I was out." He goes, "Well, I was busy."
And uh I go, "Well, can I have some time to think about it?" And he goes, "You got to tell me by Monday. This is late on Friday." So, I went and talked to Dean Jerry Beco, who's my uh professor and and a dean of the law school. I'll try to make this fairly short. And you're good.
He said, "How old are you?" And I'm like, "I don't know, whatever." I was 23, 24. And he goes, "Look, um, let me give you some advice. When when you're making a career decision, always choose the path that creates more opportunity downstream." And I know that sounds super duh pedestrian, but it's been maybe my biggest touchstone of advice.
And under that analysis, I clearly should take the clerkship because back then you could only take clerkships out of law school. And so it it was the option broadening uh choice. Take the clerkship. It was awesome. The Ice Miller job was still waiting for me uh on the on the back end. Uh although uh when I came out of there, I decided to take a job paying less at a small boutique litigation firm because I thought I wanted to try cases.
Uh, and that's when I started getting back involved with Evan Bay, primarily because of my connections with his dad. Things led to things. Um, and he offered me a job in on his staff after he won. And I never thought I would, but I'm like, hey, I'm 29 years old. I can work in the governor's office. I'm going to do that.
Yeah, I do think there is a great lesson of pursuing interesting interesting paths. Like for me, coming out of college, I uh joined the OR fellowship. Yeah. Awesome. Uh, so I got to be a part of that 2-year program and it it's pretty absurd cuz you kind of go into it, you don't know where you're going to get assigned. You don't know like what you interview with five different companies and you get a job offer from one of them and it's a normal full-time job, but they also there's a lot of other like, you know, things surrounding that.
And I was like, this seems interesting. You could probably make more money if you go direct to direct to the mouth of Lily or Ro. ran into these big my friends were getting these like pretty robust cool jobs that like probably had a I mean they definitely had a higher salary but like I took this job and it opened so many doors for me like being part of the or fellowship community the network there and it's like pursuing these interesting paths that open more paths that you never know where it's going to lead you but I think that uh like as time goes on you're grateful for having opportunity and options and I think that's a piece So many times people get caught in like, well, what's a dollar amount? I mean, today, it's kind of like the college athletics route. It's like, well, I'm only going on whatever school, it doesn't matter. It's all about dollars.
It's like, am I going to get a million bucks? Cool. I'm going there. No idea about the degrees, no idea about anything else. It's just chase the money, get that, move on to the next thing. And I don't know, opportunities and doors.
That's pretty interesting. But you find yourself as a 29year-old in the governor's office as were were you originally hired as a chief of staff? No, I was uh he offered me the um to be his executive assistant for transportation and I said, "Hey man, I don't know anything about transportation. I'm not an engineer. I not that background." He goes, "I'm I'm not hiring for your knowledge.
I'm hiring you for your judgment. You can learn the stuff. I just need somebody I can trust who can analyze stuff and and and and exercise judgment." So, I came in doing that. I did that for two years. Um and then shortly after I joined I became deputy chief of staff and then when the chief of staff left I became chief of staff and I served that for the rest of the time.
But to your to your earlier point about opportunities and I talk about this in in the book I think it's really important um especially for young people maybe listening to this podcast to p pursue things you think are important and you think create value and you think create opportunities downstream. Not what your friends think is cool, not what um pays more money. Uh, and that's easy to say and hard to do when you have responsibilities. But, but this this I'm not embarrassed to tell you. Every time I've had a choice, um, I've taken the job that pays less and it's worked out really well for me because I've pursued opportunities, not salary numbers. Yeah.
I mean, that is is so interesting. And I think that it is a a task for all of us to go out there and figure out what we believe it and what you think. Like it it is a world where it's so easy to just be like I don't I don't care about I'm I'm like neutral and vanilla about everything because I don't know. It's like it is like a world where it's almost like you're walking on eggshells a lot and it's almost like not cool to care at times and you're just like oh I'm I'm just like cool as a cucumber. And so figuring out and doing some internal reflection on well what do I care about? What do I think?
Like for me it's people. Like I was just like if I can sit down and have conversations with people like I think I can figure out a business model that it's going to make it work at some point but like being able to do this and find sponsors and do the whole thing like it seems like a fun journey that at the end of it either it's going to work out and people are going to be excited and it's going to you know be successful or I'll have a hell of a story to tell and someone will need a marketing person to hire 100%. And and I do want to um endorse the the the OR fellowship. What a what an awesome thing. My my daughter-in-law Molly Kuramoto is a product of that and it kept Wait, Molly's your daughter-in-law? Yeah, my my son Connor just married Molly about a month ago.
Wow, there's even more threads. So, I got to host or I am hosting at the Mark and Karen Hill uh gala. I'm having Scott Dorsey on and doing my first ever live podcast in front of an audience and Molly set the whole thing up on the high alpha exact target side. Like that is Wow. There are a lot of invisible space right there. No, she she's awesome.
And you know, Purdue girl, I had to get over that. But we're embracing Purdue and the captain of the soccer team and but but the point is a lot of people talk about the brain drain, fighting the brain drain. The OR fellowship, I think, is exhibit A on how you can effectively fight the brain drain. Bring people in cuz she would have been back in Cincinnati or whatever. But but that program gave her a reason to stay in Indianapolis and now she loves it. They live down in Fountain Square and they're killing it.
I love that. Well, I actually heard about one and I went up there and saw it. Wobbash County does the Waw Bash County Summer Fellowship. They brought in 18 college kids to Waw Bash County to work at local businesses for the summer. They have like um like networking events and opportunities. I think like 14 or 15 of them live in a converted Airbnb, like a a giant old church that's converted into like a multi-room Airbnb.
Like talk about a summer getting to spend it in a small town in Indiana with 15 or 18 new friends. And talk about them for a rural community of 10,000 like that's what the the town of or the city of Wabash is. How innovative and like the marketing and the ability to bring people in. They pay them a pretty good chunk there, but that's so cool. Like bringing people and getting young people exposed to different parts of of Indiana. I love that.
Yeah. So, we move through. You're the chief of staff. What is the roles and responsibilities of a chief of staff for a governor of a state? Basically everything. You know, the governor uh is is on major policy issues, so forth and so on.
I mean, there's like 38,000 state employees. At any one time, a hundred of them are doing the stupidest things, you know, you could ever imagine. So, you're like figuring that out, cleaning that up. Um Um I met um on a monthly basis with all the agency heads, ran the office. Um it's a it's a really big job. And to have that admin, oh yeah.
Yeah. A lot of admin. Um some external stuff. Again, that's one of those things, man. We were talking before about um and this is one of the things I talk about in the book. Oftentimes you think there's some magic to these different jobs, right?
Because when when when they when he asked me to be chief of staff, I'm like that's over my I think that's over my head. I don't think I I don't think I can do that. And later about being athletic director like I can't do that. I think about that. But one of the one of the things I tell people and try to follow is if the person offering you the job thinks you can do it, believe them. And don't be turned off by I'm not ready, I don't know, blah blah blah blah blah.
So I I did the chief of staff gig, loved it, great opportunity, young age, went back to practice law. That is the nice part about this. If you think of all of your steps thus far from law school to a clerkship, which has a finite end to it, right? Like it's two years maybe. And then you talk about a political campaign or like a political office, there's a finite end to it. So things like if you think of or fellowship or different places, it's interesting to spend your 20s in timebound careers where hey, I'm naturally going to have a buffer built in where I'm going to have to change something up and move to something different.
So, you find yourself probably early 30s at this point when the time in in the governor's office is over because that's what you know what do they call term limits or whatever that's what a political term comes to an end and you're like okay now I have to figure out what I do next and it's kind of nice to not to be forced out of your comfort zone for someone who likes to stay in that that's a great observation Nate I mean I've thought a lot about this stuff I've never quite thought that so that's an insight um because the there's there's two there's two four-year terms you know and so I told the governor I was originally going to do it just 2 years. I stayed till the end of four years. Then he asked me to stay till the session. It was an extended session. So I didn't get out of there till the summer of 93 I guess. Then decided to go back into oh and during that time actually after that um the governor asked me to chair the Clinton Gore presidential campaign be the head of it in Indiana and I was like I don't know I don't know how to do that.
It's like, ah, you can do it. You'll figure it out. You know, and so it was this great I did that and it was a great growth opportunity. I got to go to the White House, meet with the president, you know, you know, go to in your 30s. Yeah. In your 30s, [clears throat] you're at the White House meeting with the president.
That's pretty cool. It was very cool. 1996, I was the state chairman, so I would have been 37, you know, doing that. It was cool. But I So I uh I had five job offers um at law firms coming out of the governor's office. Um, I picked the one that paid the least.
And again, I'd like to think not because I'm stupid, but because I felt like the firm I chose provided the biggest upside. And I could talk uh a a lot about that. I I I I won't, but I just encourage your listeners to look beyond, you know, the the the superficial pieces of it. that turned out to be uh a great opportunity for me because by the end of my tenure there, which was 15 years, the longest I've been anywhere. Um I was one of the most highly compensated partners there. And I don't say that to polish my halo, but rather to say I I could have held out for more money.
Like people in the firm that were talking, they could have said you could have done that. But their advice was come in, people in the firm know that you you took a little bit of a haircut on what you could have done. um instead of being the guy with a target on his back because he held out for more money, right? And then my my my my career enabled me to end up being extremely successful there even though I got in on the escalator a little lower than I had wanted to. Yeah. I always love if you truly believe in what you're doing, whether you're in a sales role, you're a lawyer, if you're convicted that you're on the right path, put yourself in the position to have a high upside where it's like, hey, you know, I might be in a little bit more variable.
I might start with a haircut, but if I truly believe in what I'm doing and I know that the effort that I'm putting in there is going to has the uh the opportunity to have an output of multiples, go with that route. Absolutely. Along this journey, I think you that's like 1993 is when you leave the governor's office and then you end up going to Baker Daniels. Yep. Seven years after that, you get involved with the capital improvement board. Right.
Right. This is really interesting to me. We're celebrating this year 30 years of victory field which the capital improvement board I've had Milt Thompson on. I've had a few different people. I've had Randy Luwendowski that's talked about the city of Indianapolis owns the stadiums like uh the capital improvement board is kind of like the governing body that's kind of like a stadium authority. You know they own Lucas Oil Stadium, Victory Field, Gaming Fieldhouse and importantly the Indiana Convention Center.
Yeah. [clears throat] which are all these I mean huge tourist attractions where you know obviously there's eightish football games a year held in Lucas Oil but Monster Jam and Morgan Wallen and all these different things uh that's not owned by like the Colts don't Odin stadium correct that's that's very important by the way yeah which is super interesting because we're almost going through I just had Danny Lopez on and we talked about the Hammond stadium and how Northwest Indiana could have a the potential for a capital improvement board that talks about operating a stadium that could potentially go up there and house the Bears. A lot we could get into on that. The highlight is I want to hear your perspective of your time with the capital improvement board and I mean right around that time Victory Field had just been built. We were getting ready for or had just done um Cambridge had just opened.
Cambridge had just opened and then Lucas Oil was just around the corner. So we were really pushing our chips to the center of the table of hey we care about sports in the city of Indianapolis. Talk to me about what was appealing for you and why you got involved with the capital improvement board. My deputy chief of staff when I was chief of staff was Bart Peterson and my successor as chief of staff was Bart Peterson. And so when he ran for mayor, I was really involved in his campaign. In fact, I was his transition director after he won.
Um, and he came up to me and he said, "Hey man, I want you to be the president of the capital improvement board." And again, I go, "I I I don't have the chops for that. I mean, that's like Jim Morris and Dave Frick and Ted Bone and those kind of dudes. P. Mallister, I, you know, I don't think I can do that. And he goes, "Yeah, you can.
And I need somebody whose judgment I trust cuz I don't have time to just I want you to do what I would do if I had the time to spend thinking about it." So, I did. I'm I'm I'm bringing that up because again an example of doing something I didn't really feel like I had the chops to do but did the the genius of Indianapolis is that without natural uh attributes like a seashore or mountains or whatever Indianapolis through through I think shrewd visionary leadership you know 20 you know 30 years ago with some of the guys I mentioned including Ted Bow and Jim Morris figured out this amateur sports capital hospitality strategy. And so Mayor Luger uh put um Market Square Arena downtown. Rex Early and Steve Goldsmith doubled down with um Victory Field and Gamebridge. Um and I could give you a long boring history about the convention center, but we created our own destination.
We owned it and it's placebased. It's not going anywhere, which is a big deal. It's not an industry that's going to pull up stakes and go. We we literally own it. Um, and it's why there's such a great quality of life in Indianapolis and the surroundings areas because the visitors and conventioneers enable us to have quality of life amenities that are beyond what we would have if we were just the residents of our city like Growth of St. Elmo's, all the bars and restaurants downtown, even on the perimeter of the city.
I I felt heavily the the legacy of being that steward. Um, and so when it looked like we were in danger of losing the Colts, um, we came Wait, what? When when Bart Peterson became mayor, um, the Colts were on the back end of a of a deal that paid them, um, the average regardless of how much money they generated. It guaranteed that they'd make at least the median uh, NFL revenues. Um, that money had to come from the city. We did a study um, that would have cost like $20 million a year for for basically nothing.
Um, and we were like, we can't do that. If if I'm going to be paying that kind of money, at least we ought to be ought to be like on a on a building or or on a on a on a long-term arrangement. And this this this podcast is long enough to give you all the the details of that. But but there there was a serious uh belief like, are you on the table? Like, are you around a table with the ERS family and they're like, "Hey, we need like we this was our deal. Like, we're supposed to get this amount of money."
And you're like, well, you as stewards of the taxpayers's dollar are like, well, we can't make that investment. Jim say the family never threatened to pull up stakes. They they were great partners in in working through this, but they had a deal that the previous mayor had negotiated that he acknowledged was a band-aid to say, "Hey, we will write you checks to keep you even." and and Jim, you know, understandably like, I kind of like that deal, you know, because I get checks until the deal runs out in 8 years and I'm a free agent because the contract ran out and then guess you can't be the mayor that loses the Colts. You can't be the mayor that loses the Colts as a you know, it makes us a major league city. It's like that's a that's a problem for someone else to handle down the road, right?
And and there are people in the community that go, "Well, you know, screw the billionaires and let them go and blah blah blah blah blah." And I'm like, "Hey, then you're going to be like every city, Cleveland, Baltimore, St. Louis, who told their teams, "Yeah, we're not going to we're not going to bend over and and and and do what it takes to to keep you." And they lose the team, and then they'll pay whatever it takes to get another team. Except we never would have gotten another team. The fact that the Colts are in Indianapolis is an historical accident.
Um, the league doesn't like the Colts being middle of Indianapolis because it's cannibalizing the markets for Chicago, uh, Cincinnati, St. Louis. Bob Eers got in when the when the league wasn't paying attention to our great benefit. Now we're a great price franchise and they're glad we're here and all that stuff, but they probably wouldn't give us a new franchise if we lost the Colts. So that's that's why it was so critical at that moment in time. We got to figure this out.
And Bart told me that I had to figure this out. And so we had very productive meetings with the Colts, but I had to meet with Jim Ers and um we were trying to get them, this is ironic because usually it's the team saying we want a stadium and the city going uh not so sure. We were saying we the city, we want a stadium because the only way we could generate the revenue necessary to keep the team was through having a stadium uh a new stadium. And Jim Ersce literally said to me, "Hey, I don't know if the city could support the team. You can give me a turnkey stadium and I and I don't know if I want it." So, we we we had a compet not a competition exactly, we invited four different architectural firms to come in and design a stadium because I wanted Jim Ers to see what was possible and see what economics were possible.
Like how many people could go to the RCA dome at the time? That was where they were playing, correct? Yeah, like 58,000, I think. Okay. Lucas Oil is like 65. But it's not so much about capacity, it's about um um game day experience.
And the RCA dome was built before at that time all the premium seating amenities and all the stuff that people wanted was there. We were also what I think ended up being beneficial was the NCA said, "Hey, you know what? if you don't make major renovations the RCA dome, we're not going to have final fours in Indianapolis anymore. And you know, that was a that was a that was a a keystone of what we were trying to build. So again, to make kind of a long story short, not quite so long, we were sitting there going, "Okay, if we're going to keep the Colts, we got to build a stadium. We want to build a stadium that we own becomes sort of the new town square that's a cityowned asset.
How are we going to do that? That's a billion dollars. Oh, and by the way, we need to expand the Indiana Convention Center to keep all these gigantic Gen Con and all the conversations that conventions that make the world go around. Um, and the NCA is talking about not wanting to have things anymore. So, we literally brought to the table the Indiana Convention Bureau, the hotel interests, the NCAA, um, and and the Colts, and came up with the craziest idea ever that we're going to tear down the RCA Dome, even though it's only, you know, 25 years old. We're going to expand the Indiana Convention Center there, and then we're going to build a new stadium just south of downtown where Lucas Oil Stadium is.
And Lucas Oil was designed to have Final Fours in mind. So if you've been to the Final Fours, when you're in there, yeah, it's big, but it looks appropriate for a basketball game cuz it was designed that way. It's not a retrofitted football stadium. It was designed from Jump Street to to have those uh final four. So that was a mega deal, man. Um we dramatically expanded the convention center, saving those uh mega conventions.
Um, we uh created a new venue for NCA Final Fours, which we've had, I don't know, a handful of those since then. Um, and created Lucas Oil Stadium. It's not only the home for the Colts, but enables us to have Taylor Swift and wrestling and and high school football. And it's it I submit to you that it's our new town square that the city uh owns. It was a big big deal. It was a it was a tough um uh push with the general assembly.
things got a little here and there. The state ended up kind of taking it over, but at the end of the day, it got done. And, you know, I'm super proud of that. I feel like um when we had the baton in the Peterson administration, um we we we we moved things forward in the great bipartisan tradition of, you know, mayors Luger and Hudnut and and and Barton and Goldmith. There is such a large rhetoric, especially today. It's so funny that we're talking about the building of Lucas Oil Stadium cuz everyone's like, "Well, don't give them I don't know, don't help billionaires fund their team in new stadiums."
And then you think about, oh my gosh, so what year was Lucas Oil built? When was it finished? 2009, 2008. Yeah, something like that. 2008. And you talk about the economic impact today.
Like I don't what what is a what does a economy make when Taylor Swift comes to town? What does a city make? You know, like you guys didn't had no idea what you were getting into then, but like the second and third order magnitude of Taylor Swift, Morgan Wallen, Monster Jam, WWE, and their like big two-day summer smash events, you know, like there's incredible economic growth that's coming out of that. And it was, you know, owned by the city. Like you get to be the landlord for the Indianapolis Colts, but also all these other events. Like, I don't know.
I when I hear that it's like okay we're we're you know doing I don't know things with taxes to help fund this thing today but we're investing in all this economic prosperity in the future tomorrow. Look I I definitely have a point of view about this and I think I think owning these um assets the city owning these assets is important and comes into play every single day. And there and there were when we were doing this deal there were people that said I like the deal. I I want to keep the Colts in the stadium. I just don't pay for it that way. And I'm like, hey man, that's not a that's not a fair argument.
Okay, you can argue I don't think there's enough value in this. Don't do the deal. Okay, I disagree with you. But if you want to do the deal, that's the price of poker. [snorts] And when you're a small market, you pay more. If you look at every lease in the NFL, the smaller the market, the more they pay.
That seems weird, but it makes sense because who's got the leverage? Yeah. where it's like you know there are I mean from MLB perspective there's two MLB teams in Chicago like there there are bigger markets that New York there LA they can handle more teams it drives the price down versus we want a team here it's it's amazing to have people come travel from all over come to Indianapolis experience St. in Elmo, experience Georgia Street, experience all these different things. Like, and again, you uh this I'm going to the final tie I'll make to Hammond. It's like no one, literally no one is driving from across the country or the state to go vacation in Hammond, Indiana.
You talk about the option for me when I look at it it's like well you talk about the ability for a place that I mean I don't know it's it's not like top of the destination list to go visit becomes a place that people want to go visit. I think that's pretty cool. I think so too Nate and and I hate to get too much in the weeds here but but when people throw up their hands about well there's tax money in there you know your your your tax subsidies. Well it's it's not income tax. It's not property tax. It's not the taxes that really make people mad.
What taxes are they? Inkeepers tax, PS, most of the people paying that are from out of state. Rental car tax, PS, most of the people that pay that are outside the state. Um, food and beverage tax, that's a choosing tax. You want to come down and party, you really care, you pay another penny on a dollar for the, you know, pictures of Bud Light. Um, and then um and then the PSDA captures additional taxes that wouldn't be there except for the stadium itself.
So I'm like these are user fees basically on non-residents. Yeah. It's like we're already paying like 42% on ticket master fees anyway. Like I don't know. Uh we're going to keep pressing forward because your experience with the capital improvement board leads you to being the president of the Super Bowl committee in 2011. And I do want to just like touch briefly on that of what did it mean to get to lead a piece of that, right?
You were the was it the president? Yeah, I was president. Securing a Super Bowl in the city of Indianapolis. What did that mean to you and what were a few of the highlights from that? We had a lunch at Dunaways when it was over there at the old oxygen company, you know, on uh South East Street. Really cool place.
And it was a handful of uh advisers to the mayor and the mayor. And he asked me to give him a list of people that could head up this Super Bowl thing because it was a big deal. We we wanted to get it. we needed to get it. It helped validate the decision to have the uh stadium and I gave them a list of all these different people I thought would be awesome. Then I went to the bathroom and when I came back they were all grinning and I go, "What?"
And they go, "You need to do it." And I'm like, "I ain't going to do it, man. I've always been a staff guy. I'm a behind-the-scenes guy. This takes somebody that's a promoter and, you know, get out in front. I mean, uh, Penske had just done it for the city of Detroit, you know.
I'm like, I that's I'm not that's not I'm not that kind of guy. So they So Bart said, "No, you got to do it." So I did it. And I'm really proud of that bid. We raised this is the only time it's happened uh before or since. We raised every penny we needed to put on the Super Bowl before we submitted the bid.
$25 million, raise it in 45 days. Because we were cutting against this argument that you're too small to to host it. So we said, "Oh yeah, I had when I went and spoke to the owners, I had a stack of the confirming um emails of people to raise the money that we uh needed." Like what were the kind of investments that you had to have from like what what type of organization? Cash literally just like a business owner or like a wealthy person in Indiana. It's like, "Oh yeah, I'll give a hundred grand to I'll give a million dollars."
And I and I had to say, "Hey, you know what, Nate, I can't promise you anything. There's probably going to be tickets and recognition on the back end, but I I can't promise you anything because I don't have it. But I went get in to give me $200,000 because we've got to show we've got the money to do this. And it was the most Indianapolis thing ever, man. Um the civic community rallied, the philanthropic community rallied, the corporate community rallied. We raised that $25 million.
I I was going and asking people shamelessly for bundles of money without being able to uh commit to that anything. So, what do I get out of it? I'm not sure. No idea, but we could get a Super Bowl. And and that and that just shows how committed people were to the city because the Super Bowl meant a lot to us for cool event, all that, but for an event town to host the biggest event in the world, the Super Bowl, Yeah. makes you able to say, "Hey man, I can handle your pharmaceutical convention, you know, I can handle your dog breeder convention.
Bring it on because we want to we want to be in a vet town." And we are in a vet town. Wow. Where were you at when you got the news that we were going to host the Super Bowl? Well, first we got the news we weren't going to host the Super Bowl. So, um, we were up against Dallas and Phoenix.
It was really cool, man, because it was, uh, Tony Dunie and and I spoke to the owners group, you know, we it was in Nashville, Tennessee. They were all in these big lazy boy chairs, 32 people. I'm like, "Look, man. There's, you know, there's the uh, Roies and there's this." I was kind of starruck. And um we put on this awesome presentation and it was it was Tony Dunie and myself.
We smoked Phoenix and and then and Roger Stallback was with the Cowboys. I remember Tony Dunie said to me, "I've never lost a Roger Stallback before. I'm not going to start today." Um, but the fact of the matter was the value to the owners was a lot more at Jerry World because they had 100,000 seats and and so it was literally multi-millions of dollars more per owner if they picked Dallas over Indianapolis. We went to five ballots and Pete Ward from the Colts I was I was in like a caucus room off the thing and he calls me. He goes, "It's Dallas."
And just hung up and we didn't get it. And uh I I went with two other people from the city. We went down to Broadway. I went to the Purple Orchid about 10:00 and started drinking Bud Lights and did that for about 7 hours. And then I said, "Ding, I'm done. Somebody take me home."
And uh and I was proud of the bid. I was proud of what we did. Dallas had to cut a lot of deals and put a lot more sweeteners in. Then Bart Peterson loses the next election and I think it's only appropriate the next mayor put his own person in. So I uh stepped back and I think it's fair to say based largely on the work we had done the year before the next year uh the city got the Super Bowl and I'm you know extremely proud of that. That's a wild experience to be in there pitching for the Super Bowl and and you have to have a heck of a pitch to go to five ballots when you're you're literally fighting against their pocketbooks.
Like they're 100,000 seats versus 65,000. Yeah. Tough. But then again, we end up getting it in 2012. And PS, Karma is awesome, right? So Dallas has it during the worst ice storm in the history of the city.
The thing's a debacle. People are getting hit with ice on the back of their heads. There's a huge controversy about counterfeit tickets. It was not good. We're in February in Indianapolis. It's 68 degrees.
You know, we have the best and we set the standard as we often do for the prearty and it's widely viewed as one of the best Super Bowls ever hosted. So, you know, um it's like we were talking about before the Chinese farmer man, it looks like bad news, it ends up being good news. It was probably better that we got the next Super Bowl than that Super Bowl. During that though, that's these are like side quests that you're doing because you end up getting a job uh with IU, your alma mater. Talk to me about how you ended up getting in with Indiana University and end up becoming the athletic director after a resignation and and like a crazy turn of events there. So, I feel like you asked me what time it is and I keep telling you how to build a watch, but you like stories and I like stories.
And there is a [clears throat] theme here about, you know, especially for your listeners and young listeners, you know, just having confidence in yourself to do things you don't think you're ready to do. And I think I've talked about some of that along the way. This is another example of that. So, I get a call from a guy named Bill Stefen, who I went to law school with. Um, interestingly, Bill Stefen is a big Republican and I've been a Democrat and he was Steve Goldsmith, chief of staff, the mayor before Bart Peterson. I was Bart Peterson's transition director.
So, we got thrust into working on some things in the transition, which can often be acrimonious and nasty and all that, but but we worked through them positively and and I feel like there were some things that I could have done to jam him that I didn't. He could have done to jam me, he didn't. So, we had a positive experience under challenging circumstances. Fast forward 10 years, I get a call from him saying, "Hey man, he was chairing the search committee for the AD job. I think you ought to apply for this. I'm like, you're crazy.
You know, what do I know about that? I don't know nothing about that. Thanks, Bill, but I ain't doing that. So, then I started thinking about it and thinking about what what the job really is. And and that moment in time was a real nater for IU athletics, right? The Kelvin Samson uh case had happened.
Um the uh AD had basically lost his job over it. uh you know, people were embarrassed to wear their IU stuff because, you know, we had been um embarrassed with this NCA infractions case and and I ended up, you know, deciding to take the job. I I tell all that backstory because if if if I had like sewn my oats and thought I was all that because we were the mayor coming in and been kind of a jerk to Bill, he would have appropriately thought, you know, you don't have you don't have the judgment or the temperament to be the AD. But it didn't. It was a classic round world story where I wasn't being civil and nice and responsible to sew the seeds for some future get. Um, I did it because it was the right thing to do, but it ended up coming back to my benefit when when Bill thought of me for this this job.
So, I felt like when I got to IU, it was a big rebuild and I was excited about it. So Jeff Smalling was a previous guest of the podcast and he came on and said, "You can't be a bad guy in Indiana because the whole town will or the whole state will know about it in 20 minutes." And it's like so true, right? If you would have jammed him and you'd been difficult to work with, like I don't know, just your reputation matters regardless of party affiliation, school you went to, career ambitions, the whole nine yards. Reputation is important and people remember how you treated them. And even in ways you talk about karma like the Indiana effect even well well down a decade down the road and it's like oh I remember this like he's a good like even though we have you know on on paper maybe different sides of an aisle like this is a good dude and we should look into this.
Exactly. Right. And and it's just a better way to live too man. I mean you know um but it it it it does it does catch up with you one way or the other. And when I got down to Bloomington, the the physical part of it sort of looked like it did. I mean, pretty much exactly looked like it did when I left as a senior in 1981.
Um, we had fallen dramatically behind. And that only became more clear as I started going to other campuses, you know, cuz when you go to IU, it's like, hey, this all looks kind of cool, but when you see what Michigan State's doing and Illinois is doing and other schools are doing, you realize how far behind we fell. So you come in in October of '08. Yeah. I I I was selected in October of08 and I started in January of 2009. Okay.
So you start January09. It's like halfway through basketball season. Like talk to me about your first day on the job. Like you are now officially the athletic director at Indiana University. Like what like who calls you first? Who do you call first?
What's what's the work that has to get done on January 1 of 2009 as the IU athletic director? Well, it's so funny, man. I get there, there ain't nothing there. My predecessor hadn't left anything. It wasn't really, you know, a super smooth transition because, you know, he'd gone out under circumstances he wasn't excited about. And and and I didn't know anything about the business.
And so, I just jumped in. So, my first day, I had the tough duty of taking one of my sons, getting on a private plane, and flying with a basketball team to Iowa to watch the Hooers, you know, play Iowa at Carver Hawkeye Arena. And I'm like kind of pinching myself like this is right on, man. You know, and uh and I hadn't been there long enough to really know what the specific problems were. So, I was ignorance is bliss. And here I am going to Iowa.
It's kind of funny on the way back, bad, bad snowstorm. There's all this ice and stuff like that. And I'm thinking to myself, damn, man. I finally get this awesome job and I'm going to end up like Buddy Holly, you know, getting on a plane in Iowa and and uh and uh grinding into the uh corn field somewhere. We got back safely and and um um I started working um inside out. So we we started working with the culture established um the spirit of Indiana new set of values and rules.
We we adopted 24 sports one team because it was a very fractionalized department which you can understand, right? I mean if you're the tennis coach, man, all you care about and should care about in a lot of ways is winning tennis or winning water polo or winning basketball or winning baseball. and we wanted to win and and we and we held up winning championships as as our goal. Um but we wanted to do it in the context of we're one team. Um and so that was a big culture shift. And then rebuilding the infrastructure, you know, Memorial Stadium was still two grand stands facing each other.
It looked like Caramel High School or or or maybe uh you know, some MAC team. It was kind of embarrassing. Um we built out I think what ultimately became one of the um premier stadiums, a legitimate Big 10 stadium with the Bull. uh Assembly Hall was literally falling down. You might remember that rafter coming down uh before the Iowa game. We uh made substantial investments uh in that.
The baseball field was like a middle school field. We built a new baseball stadium, build a new softball stadium, build a new volleyball stadium. They were literally playing in a in a middle school um gymnasium. So, we we invested close to half a billion dollars in the infrastructure. Um, and I used the uh IU bicesentennial in 2020 as my hook with the trustees and others to say, "Hey, let's get this stuff done for the bsentennial." And we did.
And that was the point where after firing two power coaches in 100 days and and and just being kind of worn out, I'm like, you know, I'm going to exit stage left here. So after 12 years, um, I retired from, uh, IU. I mean, when you look back on that time, where were the moments that it was the hardest? Like, where were you like, I got to pull my hair out. Like, this is just because you get a lot of people think getting into sports is fun. Sports are fun.
Sports are supposed to be fun. But when you get into the business and everything behind them, even more today, you know, like money and you're basically like the GM signing and you're the bank signing checks. Like, where in your journey with IU athletics were you tested to the maximum of your ability? Well, first I'm going to predicate that by saying I loved it. I loved all of it. Um, I especially loved interacting with the kids.
That's the part I missed the most. But I loved the strategy of it. I loved even the small P politics of it. I love the innovation of it. I love the competition of it. I love the performance of it.
And and feel really good about that experience. The hardest parts um were firing Kevin Wilson and then Tom Crane. Um, you know, firing power coaches is hard because you're allin with them. You You want them to succeed. Um, I poured I feel like my blood, sweat, and tears into each of them. A because I'm a nice guy, but B because their success was my success, you know, and I desperately wanted to turn around um IU men's basketball.
I desperately wanted to turn around IU football. And then one day you decide you got to make a change. That feels like a betrayal to them. And I get it. To me, it's about me being the steward and having to make the adult decision. And yeah, I'm all in until I'm not.
Does that mean I'm a hypocrite or does that mean I gave you every ounce I could and in my view, you couldn't get it done? When it comes to hard decisions like that, like what was your internal gauge? Like what what kind of uh internal process do you take yourself through before making a hard decision like that? So you were saying in in the book here in the in the section on on on on verbuff and Jesuit I I I I I I'm a big believer in the Jesuit way of proceeding not not from a super religious or theological perspective but um Ignatius was an amazing student of of of of human behavior and they give us a lot of great tools right so one of them is discernment about stepping back um discernment and detachment and stepping back and not starting with well I can't do that because here's the results. Don't worry about the result. Don't worry about the fallout.
Think about what's the right thing to do. Um, I know this sounds kind of mambby pami, but I often thought about Elanena Roosevelt's admonition to do the right thing. You might as well do the right thing because you're going to be criticized no matter what. No matter what. I decided there was going to be people on talk radio, bloggers, all that saying, "What a dumbass, you know, how could he possibly make that decision?" It's a fool's game to try to chase um acceptance, right?
The only I need to look in the mirror and be confident I did the right thing and then I could I could take on whatever criticism happened. So, so to answer your question, it's detachment, being clinical, not personal, not worrying about the consequences based on all the information you have. Um try to make the decision that you think is right. Um and then and then I can live with that. But it's also crazy, right? Like when I fired Kevin Wilson, that was sort of easy because I had I had set some uh guidelines that he violated.
So that was fairly cut and dry. Um but I didn't want to hang him out. And so, you know, I had a press conference afterwards said, "We're separating difference of philosophy and everybody's going crazy asking me questions, but a bunch of people are are going crazy." I said, "Look, I get it. I get this is a a not totally satisfying meal, but it's the one I have to serve um you guys. And I had a CEO come up to me later and he goes, "Man, that's tough cuz I I've had to hire fire h fire people under tough circumstances before, but I didn't have to walk into a press conference and try to defend it for an hour."
Yeah. Um and then Tom Crane was a different one. It was uh just my judgment that notwithstanding some really strong success that he had had um that he was going to be able to get us to where we wanted to be and keep us there. So in a way uh more art than science than the than the Kevin Wilson thing had been. But that was within a hundred days. I'm firing two power coaches.
And it took a lot out of me man. It you know it takes it takes it took a lot out of me. Yeah. I mean you start just having to defend your thought process, your discernment. That is exhausting for sure. Yeah.
And then you get you know and then the process of the search and all that. And so it was about I just said you know what I'm going to time up my departure that I don't have to do this again. that that I that I'm not going to be on a cycle that that has to make a decision about a about a power coach. And so you talk about, you know, the work that you put in, upgrades to facilities, almost half a billion dollars to then see the Indiana Hooers win a national championship 6 years later, right? Cuz I think you leave in 2020. Yeah.
Pre-COVID. Well, again, I'd rather be lucky than good. I announced on December 17th, um, 2019 that that I was going to be leaving. And then what was it? Uh March 13th when the world changed. So I I was lucky that I announced before because if if if if co had hit, I wouldn't have left.
That'd been like, you know, I I couldn't have. But I'd already announced my successor was named. Um I'd strongly uh supported the appointment of my uh deputy Scott Doulson, who's done a a great job, and I'm I'm glad that I announced um before the timing is everything, right? So you end up leaving in 2020. Six years later, what was on paper the worst college football team like by the numbers? I'm on the field too.
I mean, call a spade a spade. Like literally by the numbers on the field, the worst college football team becomes the best team in the country. 6 years later or however long that is, obviously ups and downs. Talk to me about how you felt as someone who was I mean spent 12 years as part of leading IU athletics. Well, I was thrilled. It was awesome.
Great thing to see. And uh all credit goes to Scott Doulson and coach Signetti. Scott I think made a a bold choice and he saw what the future of college football was and um I'm really proud of the decision that he made. And then coach Signetti um is is special and this environment um is tailor made for him. Um and obviously he's done a fabulous fabulous job. So all the credit goes to those guys.
I do take some satisfaction that I think the predicate we had laid mattered having a a full uh bowl stadium as opposed to two you know uh grandstands facing each other what we did with the locker room um the wait room so forth and so on. I I I you know I I wanted to get the shortcut. I wanted it I wanted it to happen like this. I wanted to get the hire and get the thing that made it uh happen. But but what I've concluded is that that you've got to take the journey and that um what we what we did, what we were able to do, I'd like to think helped uh lay the foundation. And I think it did lay the foundation.
Um but it took some time and grade, you know, to get us where we were. And let's face it, man, you know, undefeated national champions, I still can't believe it. And talk about a resounding demonstration of just incredible success by coach Signetti, his program, Scott Doulson. Um, it's it's it's really awesome. If you were to say in 2026, Indiana University football is going to win a national championship and go undefeated. It sounds like mad lips.
Sounds like you pulled a bunch of random things out of a hat and put it all together in a sentence and you're like, "Ha, no way that ever happens." Like, congrats to them. Absolutely incredible. But that leads your journey then into becoming the president and CEO of Gleers Food Bank of Indiana. Uh that was in 2022. Did you do anything between when you left?
I did. I left uh when I left IU I went and became a a partner at the Taft law firm and that was hard cuz it was still co and you know I get energy from being with people and and um and I was doing fine and it was it was it was good. But I mean, frankly, um, you know, I was very well compensated and, uh, you know, I wasn't, you know, killing myself and I thought, you know, this is a good gig and I'll do this until I'm not doing anything anymore. But, um, I did want to do like a side service thing, you know. Um, so I started nosing around about what I might do consistent with being, you know, practicing lawyer um, and keeping keeping my partnership at Taft. And then as things lead to things, um, I was asked whether I'd leave the partnership and go all in to be the CEO of Cleaners.
And I was like, yeah, feed the hungry, being a missiondriven job like that. Yeah, I'd like to do that. So that's what I did. So that was October of 2022. You end up becoming the CEO. And just for like reference, I think that if you don't dive into the entirety of what Gleaners is, a lot of people think it's a food bank.
So you think of like a location, maybe two locations where people go and you know you're serving meals out of there like reframe perspective here. In 20125 Gleaners distributed over 102 million meals throughout the year. Like that's wild to me. 102 million meals provided by Gleers Food Bank of Indiana. Like that's not Can you explain for people uh really the ins and outs of what Gleaners is? It's crazy, Nate, because you you think of that and you think about, you know, your [clears throat] your your pantry at your parish or your grade school or something like that.
And it's not your grandfather's food bank, right? It's not green beans in, green beans out, macaroni and cheese boxes in, macaroni and cheese boxes out. We have a 300,000 ft uh [snorts] warehouse. We have a 45,000 ft freezer, which is a big freezer. It's the biggest in the charitable food system. Like I don't even know like 45,000 square feet.
Like that's like the size of what? It's big and it's got four uh pallet positions high. So I'd love for you to come out and see it sometime. It kind of blows your mind. We have 40 trucks uh truck fleet. Um so we are we are we are built to acquire nutritious food on a massive scale.
At its essence, we're a food distributor. [clears throat] Um, uh, think of like a wholesaler. So, Gleaners covers 21 counties in central Indiana, including Marian County. We have 300 food pantries that are like your churches and so forth that that that provide food directly to our neighbors facing hunger. We provide them lowcost and no cost charitable food that they can in turn provide to neighbors in need. So, it's like an it's almost like a transportation like ecosystem of food.
Yeah. We're a wholesaler. Yeah. Um, now we run one direct um, pantry out of Gleaners. We have four distributions uh, a week and it's the largest food pantry um, in this in the state. So pantries serve neighbors, food banks serve pantries.
Okay. Yeah. Now, here's here's uh, an important I think piece. Long story short version is we gleaners provide that same service that we provide food pantries in our 21 counties to food banks all the way around the country. We have gotten so good at acquiring nutritious food on a massive scale and we can talk a little bit about how we do that if we want. Yeah.
Um that that we have become a source for food banks around the country. So we're in 44 states. We serve 145 of the 200 food banks in the country. Our biggest customer is the Food Bank of Alaska. Um, which I say because a it's weird and interesting and b it underscores that if if we can economically serve Alaska from central Indiana, we're doing something right. We serve Hawaii.
We send food um uh to the Hawaii Food Bank. Um, and that does two things for us back here in Indiana. one, it helps us have more better food that we can provide to people in Indiana. Um, and secondly, it's a it's a it's an enterprise. We make a little money doing that and it helps our financial s sustainability so we can continue our mission of feeding food insecure Hoosiers. Can you talk to me about the challenge and the problem that is faced and why the mission and the work that Gleaners is doing is so important to the Hooser state?
I want to call on an analogy I've heard you use. um before um most recently when um Lindsay Craramich and Bo Byron run here. People have one kind of reaction when they see somebody hitchhiking. Um they have another kind of reaction when they see somebody pushing their car. And often times, at least what I think I heard you say is people not so sure they're going to react to the first, but when somebody's pushing their car, they're going to react. All the people we serve, Nate, are pushing their car.
And I think there's a misimpression that a lot of them are hitchhiking. They're not. They're either not able to push their car because they're children, disabled, or elderly. About 30% of the people we serve are children, disabled, or elderly. The balance, they're all working. Um they most of them have at least one job in their household.
They're they're pushing their car as hard as uh they can. We had Fred Payne on talked about Alice. Yep. Asset working. Yeah. Asset limited, income, but they're employed.
And it's like, oh, they're not like sitting around not doing anything, but just whether you know technology, life, like high school diploma, whatever passes them by or college education, and you're not able to get a you are uh income constrained. And so it's like you're not able to get the promotion or the better job making 100 grand a year, but you are working, but just with like, you know, the way that milk and eggs and the way uh the prices of things that you need, it becomes tough. Well, exactly. And this may sound weird from a food banker, but you know, I think I think I was a better AD at IU because I hadn't been an AD before. I think it enabled me to challenge the conventional wisdom to go after things that people thought you're never going to get there, you know, and and I think a similar thing with food banks. I didn't know nothing about um uh food bank running and I think that's helped me challenge premises uh think about things in a different way.
And one of the things that I think we think about differently is food insecurity is not about food. There's plenty of food. The system throws it away by the railroad car full every day just as part of business. That was a dirty little secret I didn't know. Food insecurity is about poverty. People are hungry because their expenses exceed their income.
Um it's like there's plenty of uh you know good health care, but not everybody gets it. plenty of good education, but not everybody gets it. There's plenty of good food, but but not everybody gets it. So, the the the tough news is that I don't see that changing anytime soon. I think there's four drivers that are uh keeping people um in need of charitable food. One, housing, killing people.
Indianapolis, Marian County, um Carmel, uh Anderson is ground zero for that. You may or may not know that we were the highest increased um uh cost of rents in the country, 27% last last year. And and you know, people your age, my kids age, it's not like when I was your age and you could get a house and get on the wealth escalator, it's so expensive. And then and then and then and then people without means, they can't stay in their apartments cuz rents are going way up. So housing is killing people. Um, groceries went up 30% during the pandemic.
Hasn't come down since. That stinks for people of means. My friends are complaining how much stuff cost at the grocery store. But people of means spend about 5% of their income on groceries. Poor people spend 30% of their income on groceries. Going back to rents, half the people in the country that rent are paying 50% of their income on rent.
Economists will tell you that's crazy. That's unsustainable. Right? So housing not likely to change. grocery prices, inflation in general not likely to change. Wages are stagnant.
Um and then and then government support is on the decline. So, so those things um create, you know, storm clouds on the horizon for continuing need. But I'm not pessimistic. I'm optimistic. Yeah. Because I think uh entities like gleaners, our donors, our volunteers are making a difference.
We're feeding the line. We're getting people food. But importantly, we're shortening the line, right? We're we're providing wraparound services, advocacy for government programs, and a uh and a u fungeable charitable aid and food that uh frees up money so that they can pay their rent, they can buy their uh medicine, they can pay their utility bill, and I think there's things we can do to help people attain self-sufficiency by providing them food. Wow. Wow, that was a lot.
Sorry. Oh, I love that. It's super interesting. It It reminds me a lot of we had um someone from Wheeler Mission come on and he talked about homelessness. Uh being unhoused is usually the majority of the time not just like one split thing happens. It is, you know, life choices, burning brid.
Like, you know, I'd like to think today, I hope people out there listening or my friends, like if if my house were to burn down today, I would have a plethora of couches or whatever to sleep on somewhere, guest rooms around there, and not everyone has that. He talked about, so he had gone through the program at Wheeler Mission, and he had been an alcoholic and had just like burned all the bridges until he ended up where no one would take him in anymore. And so he talks about like the wraparound services of the thing. It's like you think it's just beds. You think that it's like if we just had enough places for the unhoused community of Indianapolis to sleep that it would all be okay. But it all largely is, you know, whether it be like financial literacy or it be like all of these other wraparound components of your life that you know you need to get in in order to figure it out.
Like I think that there's just an interesting piece where it's not just food for the sake of because you're hungry, but it's that whole holistic of all of the things, you know, and the circumstances that might happen in life. Well, the Federal Reserve Board, which isn't exactly a bastion of bleeding heart, you know, liberalism, um, had a study that said 40% of Americans are one unexpected $400 expense from being upside down. They're living paycheck to paycheck. and that $400 engine problem, water heater out, whatever, can can start you in a spiral. And and so I don't think we like to think about people living so close to the line. Um but they but they do.
And often it doesn't have to do with, you know, poor choices or, you know, some sort of um character defect. Although sometimes it does. Sometimes it's just people run out of runway and they're, you know, going as best they can and they can't get there. How many people in the state of Indiana does the work you're doing at Cleaners affect? Unfortunately, we crossed a milestone um that a million hooers are considered uh food insecure. Um which means they don't know where their next meal's coming from for them or their kids.
Doesn't necessarily mean they're abjectly hungry. Um but they go into the weekend and they don't know where their where their food's uh coming from. Indiana's got 7 million people, so I didn't go to Purdue, but I can do the math on that. That's like one out of seven people are hungry. One out of five children who certainly have not brought anything on themselves. One out of five children in the state of Indiana are food insecure.
So I'd like to say or observe that hunger is not a them problem in another county in another part of town around the tree over there. Hunger is an us problem for one just because of the sheer numbers. And and I promise you it works. It's one out of seven. There's people in your bowling league, PTA, book club, um, whatever that are experiencing or next to someone experiencing um, food insecurity. Um, it's also an US problem because as much as food insecurity stinks for the people who are food insecure, and it does, half a million people in this country die from from nutrition-based uh, illnesses.
um um you're more likely to have all kinds of bad diseases and stuff if if if you're food insecure. Food insecure stinks for those of us who aren't food insecure. Society pays a price uh for hunger, for example. Um $1. 8 billion in health care costs annually are attributable to food insecurity. Who pays that?
Taxpayers and and and and um insurance uh holders. Um, studies show that for every percent uh the for every 1% food insecurity rates go up, um, violent crime goes up 12%. That's not to condone that, but people do crazy stuff when their kids are hungry. You're less likely to graduate from school. You're less likely to keep your job. Those have economic consequences for people who aren't hungry.
So we try to make those uh pitches with um policy makers who sometimes may not have as much sympathy for the people that are actually facing hunger but can see some societal costs and may may help drive solutions to that. So how do you solve the problem? It is a I think it's a solvable problem in some sense like at least fixing or or changing the number so it's not one in every seven hoosers are are facing food insecurity especially not one in every five kids in Indiana like that one is just like a double heart wrencher like 20% of kids you know how do you start to fix that problem and what what needs to happen I agree with you I think it's highly soluble and I think sometimes people will throw up their hands and say well that's that can't solve. So, I'm I'm not going to do anything to get frozen into in action. Um, I think there are things we can do. It's multiaceted, right?
So, so I'm here thumping my chest about how awesome Gleaners is and we and we're awesome and the and the charitable food system is awesome. So, my friends at Second Helpings, Meals on Wheels, Midwest Food Bank, we all do great work. But but but for every meal we provide in the charitable food system, the federal government provides nine. Okay? So the so the government is the 800 lb uh uh gorilla here through school lunch and SNAP and so forth to really move the needle I think requires government action and it can work. So during the pandemic um they extended the childhood tax credit bipartisan legislation wasn't political moved to action because of the pandemic half the children living in poverty moved out of poverty.
Okay. So so government policy um that is bipartisan non-extreme helping people who are already trying to help themselves can really move the needle a lot. providing people wraparound services. We we have a resource center where we help people with health care, clothing, diapers, all kinds of stuff because a lot of people can't earn what they need to earn because of these other impediments. If we can knock some of those obstacles down, which we've been pretty effective in doing that, um we can we can help people not need our services anymore. his wild is someone who doesn't stress out about where dinner's coming from.
You know, like I know there's going to be something or I'll figure it out or I'll door dash something or cluster truck, whatever it might be. Uh knowing that, yeah, one in seven people in the state of Indiana are facing food insecure. How do you quantify what food insecurity is? Yeah. USDA defines it. I'm going to I think it's that that you don't know where your meals are coming from in the next 24 hours.
Okay. Yeah. There are some people largely because maybe they're disabled or elderly. They're hungry. They are physically hungry and they're living in an impoverished situation where they're hungry. There's others that that kind of come in and out because of a divorce or healthc care thing.
You know, they may be going a few weeks or a few months in a food food insecurity thing. Just our job is to keep pushing people up the spectrum so that the people who it's sporadic, they get all clear. The people who are really in tough become more sporadic. and and there's a whole science to doing that. What do you think listeners could do to make an impact on those numbers of food insecure hooers? I would encourage them to volunteer at their local pantry.
Uh I always promote the pantries. They're doing the frontline work. We have a robust volunteer program at Cleaners just to understand better the issue, understand better um who we're serving. Um if if they wanted to help us financially, that's awesome. We have to buy half We have to buy over half the food that we need to provide people in need. The good news is we're super good at it.
We can take a dollar and turn it into $9 worth of groceries because of the automation and all the stuff um that we have. The fact that that's gone up so much. The year before the pandemic, we spent $1. 7 million um buying food. This year um we're budgeted to spend 9. 5 million.
9. 5 million. That's going to turn into 81 million dollars of impact. Correct. That's pretty cool. It is cool.
And that's why I love this job, man. I I I wake up, you know, being able to do this missiondriven work um and basically run a substantial logistics operation, which scratches my itch for innovation and and and you know, strategy and and culture and all that stuff. So, I feel like I'm the luckiest guy in the world. Oh, man. a few years ago. It was Thanksgiving and it was the Thanksgiving after uh so my mom had passed away in 2017 and my grandma passed away a few years after that and they were like who I did every holiday with and I was living here.
I was lucky enough I bought a house in Indianapolis in 2019. I saved up all my money in college and like got lucky. Good for you. Yeah. I was like right place, right time. And it was Thanksgiving and my, you know, the rest of my family I just hadn't like made plans or done anything and I decided, you know what I'm going to do?
I'm going to go to uh homeless shelter and I'm going to serve food uh for Thanksgiving for people and and just like have a a day of philanthropy and charity. And I went to I believe it's the Wheeler Mission the Women and Children's Shelter on the east side kind of like out east uh of town and and served and you know I mopped the floors afterwards and we were it was Thanksgiving. we're like serving turkey and mashed potatoes and doing the whole thing. And that experience, not in a food pantry, but in uh the homeless shelter side of things was just eye opening for me. And it was like it was one of those things. It was my first holiday with without my grandma.
And I was like, I could be like sulking about how oh wo is me, you know, my life is, you know, oh, I wish blah blah blah blah. But instead, I took it and went out there and did this and and it was eye opening. It was like this is our community and like there are people here that have it way worse than than I was like thinking that I might have it and and it's like one of those things like I'm sure everyone who comes in and volunteers with you all where you walk in there to on a mission to help other people and it ends up helping you even more like perspective and just like vibrance for life and how grateful you are for what you do have. So, uh I think that that is just uh a definite way obviously financial support very much needed. Being good stewards of volunt of donations is also an awesome thing to hear, but also just get out there and give up your time. Like that is something that doesn't take your checkbook to do that and and it can also help you with perspective.
So, man, this is awesome. I've had such a great time getting to hear about your I mean your journey from East in Washington at what George's Liberty Bar Liberty Tavern. Yeah, George Liberty Bar. George's Liberty Bar to IU Athletics to the State House to all the amazing things you've done. We've come to the end where we have a few fun Indiana questions for you as we wrap up. Uh this question is brought to you by our friends at JC Hart.
They're a leader in creating enjoyable living experiences at apartment communities all across Indiana and beyond. Check them out at homejart. com. My question for you, why do you call Indiana home? Because it is home. On the glass side, I'm a fifth generation Hooser.
Uh George Glass had a tavern in Madison, Indiana, and was a civic leader there. And is this the one that died in a duel? He did die in a duel. He got shot through the heart defending some kids. That's wild. Kind of wild.
Yeah. You you have a great great memory. And then on my mom's side, I'm a fourth generation. Uh they they came from Zanesville, Ohio, ox pulled uh covered wagon and settled in Tipton County. So it's been home for for generations. and and I've tried to be here and and make a difference and and I'm uh grateful to to have a place that that that that I feel so much pride in and and as you highlight on your program, it's an awesome place, a fascinating place, lots of nooks and crannies and love living here.
Yeah. Well, speaking of nooks and crannies, this is your opportunity to shed some light on a part of the state that more people need to be talking about. What is a hidden gem in Indiana? I I have to pull the Red Key Tavern. You know, we're we're we're sitting here uh in uh in Broadripple uh at the corner of 52nd College. My dad uh grew up at 4919 Carlton and the Red Key runs deep with us uh in the early 50s when Russ settle had just bought the place.
Um my grandfather looked in the window and saw my underage uncle in there drinking beer and playing pool and called the cops on him and then let him stay in jail over the weekend. So that that was sort of the first glass connection with the Red Key. And then my dad spent more time in there than he probably should have. And and uh Russ never really liked me cuz my dad was a little bit of a troublemaker. But uh in in later years, uh we connected and it's just an awesome, you know, dive with great cheeseburgers and and the rules on the wall. Rules on the wall and and people people leave you alone there and and and um it's it's it's an awesome place.
The Red Key Tavern. Yeah, that's a good one. Okay, now this is what resource new guest ideas or learn about people that are making a big impact in Indiana. Who's a Hooser we need to keep on our radar? Someone who's doing big things. You know, I'm going to say I know he's been on your show.
I'm going to say Bo by. Um, you know, I I guess I'm a kind of a homer on that because of my affinity for his grandfather and and his father, but here's a here's a person that could really do anything. He was a college athlete, you know, scholar, and he decides to go in the Marine Corps, uh, because, you know, he said to me, "I've had it too easy. I've had this easy life. I need to toughen myself up and and serve others." And then he's coming back here and traveling the state uh to be Secretary of State um but be involved in the public policy uh process.
And he's in it for all the right reasons. um common sense guy, you know, doesn't buy into a lot of extreme things, looking for ways to bring us together. And you know, that's what I want, man. I want I want I regardless of political stripe or identity, who who's going to find the things that we have in common because you know what? We have a lot more in common than we don't. But but people chasing clicks and and and and and viewers and they're they're and algorithm hits are trying to scare us from each other and all that and and and I see when I go out to pantries, we have much more in common.
Finally, when you think about your journey from again the the mile square of Indianapolis down to Bloomington to work in the state house to athletics, the Super Bowl, everything when you close your eyes and think about what it means to be a Hooer. What is your favorite Indiana memory? I met my wife at an IU football game um back when you could shoot a cannon through there and not hit anybody. and uh and and then we went to a football game, I highu Michigan and I took her to Brown County State Park and walked through the park and then we sat on a on a boulder and I proposed to her and gave her a ring and and I always tease her about giving her the rock on the rock. But um you know that was an important uh part of my life, a wonderful part of my life, a great decision by me and then to do it in the context of kind of IU IU athletics and and Brown County State Park was just pretty cool. Fred, it has been a pleasure to get to hang out with you and learn more about your incredible journey all throughout Indiana.
I'm excited to finish the book. I feel like I already know the ending now at this point, but it is a heck of a read. Uh, I do think what I have gained most of from our conversation and from reading so far is your willingness to listen and understand that people are different and have different backgrounds and different perspectives. And though you don't always have to agree with other people, it's important to hear their story and put yourself in their shoes for a little bit. I think that is just something that can be missed at times. Uh it's been awesome to hear about I mean honestly awesome and not awesome to hear about all the work that you guys are doing at Cleaners.
Obviously the goal would be to put you guys out of business one day or actually just focusing externally of Indiana, you know, like more Alaska work, more other places, right? But um to think about innovation on that nonprofit side and think about the ways that you're taking a dollar and making it make $9 of impact like that is super cool and to be the gold standard of it where other states are looking to you for leadership and guidance there. I think it's incredible. Uh it just shows uh it's a testament to the team that you guys have there at Gleaners and the impact that you have. If people want to learn more, if they want to book a volunteer time, how can they do that? Yeah, gleaners.
org. Um you can uh volunteer. You can if you're in need, it'll help direct you to the nearby pantry to to to get food and so pretty much all the information is there. Absolutely. All right, thanks for stopping by and we'll talk to you soon. Thanks, Nate.
Really appreciate the opportunity. This show is made possible by our friends up at Sweetwater. Whether you're looking to start a podcast or take your content to the next level. Click the link in the description to see all my gear recommendations at Sweetwater. If you want a behind-the-scenes look at everything we're doing across the state, make sure you follow me on Instagram and Tik Tok, Nate Spangle. Thank you so much for listening and being a part of what makes the Hooser State great.