(Note:  This is Ken Inadomi’s story of the epiphany that brought him to Project Redwood, taken from his opening remarks at the Project Redwood October 2015 Annual Meeting)

Good morning everyone. My name is Ken Inadomi for the people I haven’t met. I want to welcome you to our Annual Meeting, it’s wonderful to see a crowd this size.

One of my favorite sayings is that when like-minded and mission-driven people get together, great things happen.   And seeing all the faces in this room, I know that there are some great things in store for us today.

I thought I would take a few minutes to set the stage for today’s conversation. I’d like to share a very personal story, a story about a journey that led me into the non-profit world and ultimately to Project Redwood. And I think it’s a journey that will resonate with many of you here. So let me take you back to April of 2008, about seven and a half years ago.

It is a hot day, I’m on Interstate 80, driving home to Manhattan from my office in New Jersey. Picture me in a black X5 BMW.  No, I was NOT working in non-profit then. I’ve got the windows rolled up, I’ve got the air conditioner on, and I have music blasting, listening to my favorite satellite station, E Street Radio, Bruce Springsteen, twenty-four seven. Eventually I’ve got to get gas, so I stop at one of those mini marts. But I also had some basic cravings to satisfy, so as the gas was pumping, I go into the mini mart and I pick up a can of Pepsi, a bag of fried pork rinds, and a pack of Marlboros. Keep in mind, I haven’t smoked in years.

I get back to the car, I flip on the radio, and Springsteen comes back on. I don’t know about you, but I love Bruce Springsteen not only for his inspirational songs, but because his self-defined role as a singer-songwriter is to chart the distance between the American dream and the American reality, and how that distance, that gap is growing wider each year for many Americans. And he’s continually reminding those of us who are fortunate enough to hold positions of opportunity that a lot of people out there need our help.  So I flip the radio back on and it’s a rebroadcast of a live concert, and Bruce is hollering his favorite war cry, Nobody wins unless everybody wins.

Something inside of me snapped.  I sat there, and I thought about my life and about what Springsteen had just said, and then looked down at the junk I just bought – the sugar, the fat, the nicotine – and I realized that my external hungers reflected an inner void.  I had been “successful” to that point. My company in New Jersey, CIS, was one of the largest independent credit reporting agencies in the United States, we provided credit scores and underwriting data for mortgage lenders and loan underwriters, offices on both coasts.  What I realized is that although I had created a life of success, what I wanted was a life of impact. Within a minute of that epiphany, something happened. Some people say it was a coincidence, some say a signal from the universe, I call it an angel intervention.  My cell rings, it’s my assistant saying she just received an urgent email from a housing trade association asking “if Ken knew anyone in the New York area who might be qualified and that was interested in becoming Executive Director of the New York Mortgage Coalition.”

The New York Mortgage Coalition is a non-profit housing agency based in New York that focuses on affordable home ownership for low-income families in the New York area. Apparently, the incumbent Executive Director had taken maternity leave and had decided to not return.  As I drove home that evening, I never did open up the pork rinds or the Marlboros, but yeah, I drank the Pepsi!  I drove deep in thought, thinking about my life and asking myself the timeless question, “if not now, when?”  Long story short, the next day I applied for the position. It turns out that the search committee was open to hiring someone from the private sector because they looked at this as a turn around opportunity, for someone to come in and revitalize a stagnant agency.  I started in June 2008.

Now keep in mind that 2008 was at the height of the mortgage melt down, particularly in New York.  Our clients were low and moderate income families, primarily families of color, nearly 80% black and Hispanic living in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Long Island. We wanted to help them to get a piece of the American dream, affordable home ownership, in a legitimate way. However, in previous years, that same demographic group, low and moderate income families of color, had also been targeted by predatory lenders.  Those families who already owned homes were now, left and right, by the hundreds and by the thousands, facing the possibility of foreclosure.  So our work was nonstop as we addressed two pressing needs:  to help aspiring home buyers become homeowners for the first time, and to help existing homeowners avoid foreclosure.

Starting salary was $70,000 a year. No more driving out to New Jersey in an X5, I took the subway from the Upper West Side to Downtown. I went from a plush office in a building that I own to working in an open bullpen in a cubicle with a room full of millennials.  The bottom line is it was the most rewarding work that I’ve ever done, with some of the most dedicated people I’ve ever worked with.

But it gets better.

Within a year of joining the New York Mortgage Coalition, I received Project Redwood’s class-wide invitation for Cycle 4 funding. But rather than becoming a sponsor, I looked at this as an opportunity to become a potential grantee. So I remember calling up Patty Mintz. And I said, “Patty what is this all about?”  She said, “Ken you have to apply, it’s not an onerous application at all.”  It ended up being one of the toughest applications I’ve ever done! We didn’t get it, but the process of writing that application forced me to articulate a vision I had in my head for the Mortgage Coalition that I never committed to paper.  And that alone was a key benefit.
 
 
 
 

But it gets even better than that.

A couple weeks after receiving notice that we were not approved, I received an email I believe from Mary Pruiett and Kristi Smith inviting me to attend Project Redwood’s Annual Meeting, and to make a presentation on the Mortgage Coalition.  The meeting was held in New York in October, Patty hosted it at her family’s mid-town law office, we had a great time. Up until then I really wasn’t involved in Project Redwood, I hadn’t contributed anything other than to write an occasional check. But now that I was operating in the non-profit space, the mission and work of Project Redwood resonated and I dove in.  I still remember receiving a hand written thank-you note on Project Redwood letterhead from the two co-chairs at the time, Ed Kaufman and Kristi. I stumbled upon the actual note card the other day and as I re-read it, I realized that Project Redwood truly is an organization that cares, and let’s face it, who hand-writes notes anymore?  We do.

But something else great happened at the Annual Meeting, on the funding side.  I met with Ann McStay that day, at the time she was with Bank of New York Mellon. She facilitated an introduction for me to meet with her community development people, and that introduction ended up generating over $50,000 in funding from the Bank of New York Mellon to the New York Mortgage Coalition over the past five years.

It gets still better.

In a parallel world, I’m also heavily involved with my alumni group at Yale. A few years ago, I was elected to the Board of Governors of the Association of Yale Alumni (AYA). With Project Redwood in mind, I asked the Board if Yale had any type of association that pulled together mission-driven, non-profit alumni to help leverage their collective impact.  The simple answer was no.  So in 2011, we started YANA, the Yale Alumni Non-profit Alliance, whose mission is to coordinate and leverage the power of Yale’s non-profit community for the greater common good. YANA’s impact was such that in 2013 we received the AYA Excellence Award as Yale’s Outstanding Shared Interest Group.

I could go on, but let me stop here and close with this thought.  Today we’re going to hear from several Project Redwood grantees who will describe the deep impact we have had on various programs operating throughout the world.  All of that is wonderful and gratifying, BUT let’s never forget that some of Project Redwood’s most profound and transformational impact is on the lives of partners in this very room, and I know because my life is one of them.