Cathy Ackerman: Welcome to "Sweet Tea and Strategy," a podcast by Ackermann Marketing and PR featuring business and community leaders throughout Tennessee talking about issues and trends of importance to our state and beyond, and sharing some of their very best sweet tea recipes and tea sippin' stories. Delighted to have as our guest today Bill Haslam, former Governor of the state of Tennessee, who certainly needs no introduction to our listeners, I'm sure. Welcome, Bill, and we so appreciate you spending this time with us, catching us up on what you're doing and how things are in your life now that you and Crissy have moved back to Knoxville.
Bill Haslam: Well, thanks. It is good to be with you and it's good to see you, even if it is virtually.
Cathy Ackerman: To start off, staying true to the name of our little podcast, are you a sweet tea drinker? And if so, do you have a favorite recipe or a favorite watering hole in the state somewhere that has the best sweet tea ever?
Bill Haslam: You know, I'm going to be a heretic here. Unfortunately, I trained myself to move from sweet tea to unsweet tea about 20 years ago because I realized how much that sweet tea was "banking" on in terms of the calorie pack. I love iced tea, and I'm fairly addicted to it, but I've learned to do without the sugar.
Cathy Ackerman: You're my new role model. I need to do that. So, thanks for indulging us on that. I want to move right into talking to you about what life has been like for you since leaving public office and how you're spending your time these days besides spoiling all of your cute grandchildren. How many do you have now?
Bill Haslam: We have 10 grandkids, so that has actually become a huge part of our life. Three grandkids here, four in Nashville, and three in Colorado. When you get out of office, everybody says, "Don't say yes to anything; give yourself some time". I was not very good at following that advice, so I said yes to a lot of boards across the country that take time. We've been involved in some business things, and then I have just finished writing a book, which comes out at the end of May.
Cathy Ackerman: Tell me about the book. What's the title?
Bill Haslam: The book is called Faithful Presence. It's my view of the right role of faith in the public square. Everybody knows this country is locked in this partisan divide, and "polarization" has become a pretty commonly used word. We're not only disagreeing, but we're mad about it and even think the other side has bad motives. One of the things I talk about is: how can people of faith be folks who contribute to solving that problem instead of exacerbating it, which has too often been the case in the past? What if people of faith approached the public square with the certainty of what they believe in—I'm not asking people just to be in the mushy middle—but with a recognition of the humility that we're called to have?
Cathy Ackerman: I can't wait to read it. You've also been very focused on your foundation and the work you're committed to there. What are some of the priorities there?
Bill Haslam: One of the key things Crissy and I have continued to focus on is public education. I've become convinced that of the big challenges we face as a country, public education has to be at the core of solving those problems. If you look at anything from our health outcomes to income inequality to the desire to have people be better public citizens, I honestly think public education is our best hope for changing that.
Cathy Ackerman: Talk about how that relates directly to economic development for our state.
Bill Haslam: One of the key things I left convicted of was the connection between having an educated workforce and being able to attract high-quality jobs. People trusted us to make their cars, but they didn't trust us to design them. We want to take the next step and say we also want to have the executives of those firms and the people doing R&D located in Tennessee. By 2025, 55% of the jobs in Tennessee are going to require a degree or certificate. That’s why we launched "Tennessee Promise," the first state to have two years free of community college or technical school.
Cathy Ackerman: Tennessee has a very strong community college system and it's getting stronger all the time.
Bill Haslam: Higher education is a little bit like a battleship; getting it to change to meet the demands of the workforce takes a little while. Community colleges can be like little speedboats; they can change direction on a dime if an employer comes in and says, "We really need you to produce more welders, or more IT professionals, or more nurses".
Cathy Ackerman: The connection between education and healthcare is so critically important on many levels.
Bill Haslam: It is. One of the things the pandemic exposed is the term "underlying conditions". Frequently, those are the result of our own health choices. In Tennessee, we can do a lot better job of making smart choices that will help us be prepared so we won't be so vulnerable the next time.
Cathy Ackerman: What do you think is the single most significant thing you did while Governor, especially relative to education?
Bill Haslam: Probably the Tennessee Promise. In the end, it changed the expectation level and the culture around dinner tables in Tennessee so people weren't saying, "I don't know if we can go to college," but the question turned into, "Where are you going to go?"
Cathy Ackerman: On the national scene, what do you think is the most critical thing for us to focus on now?
Bill Haslam: My concern is that our worlds are becoming increasingly segmented. We can choose our own news; you can say, "I like listening to those folks because they tell me what I already believe to be true". If we're not careful, we can end up just talking and associating with people who look like us and think like us. Pretty soon you start thinking, "Everybody thinks just like I do". That's one of my concerns coming out of this—it allows us to stratify our lives even more than they have been.
Cathy Ackerman: Bill, thank you so much. We appreciate all that you've done and all that I'm sure you're going to continue to do to improve and contribute to our quality of life here.
Bill Haslam: Thanks, Cathy. Thanks for having me. It's great to see you.