 Welcome, and thank you for joining us for another episode of the nonprofit show. We are so glad that you've chosen to spend your Monday with us, or any time that you might have found any of our archives, you know, in our 400 plus now episode, so thank you for that. Today we have Ms. Denise Resnick joining us. She is president and CEO with First Place, and Denise is going to share with us what it's like hosting a sector thought leader symposium. So before we go deep into this conversation with Denise, we of course want to make sure that you know who we are if we haven't quite met you yet. Julia Patrick joins me. She is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. Without her, this beautiful brainchild episode would not be here. So we are again, 400 episodes strong, going on almost two years. I am so privileged and honored to serve alongside Julia as the co-host. I'm Jarrett Ransom, also known as your nonprofit nerds, CEO of the Raven Group, and we are also extremely grateful, have so much gratitude and appreciation to our presenting sponsors. These companies exist for one main purpose, and that purpose is your purpose. So they literally exist to help you move your mission driven goals forward into the sector and into your community. So if you have not checked out these companies, please make sure you do because they are here to help you solve your community needs. And again, we are so grateful to have back Denise Resnick, or not back, but Julia and I have been, have known Denise for quite some time. And so Denise, thank you for saying yes and joining us for today. It's my pleasure and it's great to be part of you and part of your sponsors and making sure that we are stronger together. And that's why I love the mission and vision and everything that you do. Thank you for having me. Well, thank you, you know, Denise, not to be like the fan girl thing, but I was thinking about this morning, you were on NPR a couple of years ago and I was driving to AJ's to get my morning iced tea and I heard you and I started screaming. I got all excited, jumped out of my car, ran into AJ's and I'm standing in line and I turned around and I'm like, my friend is on NPR. She was on NPR. And it was like one of those things that I've just admired so many things that you've done throughout your career that is really impressive. It's all about servicing the autism spectrum community. But you've done something really interesting recently. And I wanted to come at this conversation a little differently because you've taken more of an intellectual approach to your whole discussion. So let's start off with explaining to us the story of first place so that you can give us a little context, if you would. It starts with being a mom and and being driven by both fear and love and fear because years ago, after being told that our son had autism, we were also told to love, accept and plan to institutionalize them. And when I saw those places and traveled far and wide to visit what was out there, I freaked out. It wasn't any place that I would want our our son to live or anybody for that matter. And so I committed back then and remain committed now that we're going to find a better way and it really is out of love for our son and our family because we don't want Matthew who's now 30 to be a burden in our daughter's life that we know he needs a community and you don't build community for just one person. It's it doesn't happen that way. And so decades ago, we started the Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center and you were there from the start, Julia. And through the years, we developed not only an incredible organization that is known for its research and programs and services, but it also gave birth to a really early idea. And that was reimagining what housing for special populations could look like. And so we went out and we evaluated more than 100 properties across the country because because they're really good ideas out there and they're really good properties. And I thought we were going to find the model and bring it back here to Phoenix. And we found some good things and we published those things in 2009 and identified all these different design goals and guidelines. But we didn't find the one thing that I was really looking for. And that was something that could be replicable and scalable and financially sustainable. So that's what First Place Phoenix is. And it is trying to create an example and the power of our example to help set a new bar for for what life with autism, Down syndrome, traumatic brain injury or any neurodiversity might mean. And so that's what this is all about. That is innovation, Denise, to hear that and to know that really the community leaders, champions rallied around and said, you know, this is good, but we can still do something a little bit better. And so to hear you tell that story of really, you know, the origin of First Place is so eye opening. I think for so many of us, I mean, we've all been surviving, trying to thrive through the last 18 months. And this what you've done with First Place is really creating something that did not exist previously. And that's fascinating to me. It didn't exist, but other things have. And, you know, growing up here in Arizona, and actually my first employer out of Arizona State University, I'm a proud son devil was the Dell Web Corporation. And you think about where web was some 60 years ago when he created Sun City. And that was the option for retirees. And now fast forward today, we have all these different price points and locations and amenities and services because my being an almost senior doesn't tell you what I need in my housing. And our son's autism doesn't really tell you what what he needs or what he wants in his housing or what we want for him. And so what we really need to do is to fuel a marketplace and having a supportive community and being in a pioneering state and being in a community where people collaborate. That's what's made this possible. And, you know, nothing happens alone. It really takes people who are driven and thoughtful. And you said, Julia, earlier, in terms of that intellectual curiosity that thinking about these really big problems, but you have to come out these solutions with a lot of peripheral vision and in a whole variety of ways. And that's why it's it's so important that, you know, that we look broadly and then we start demonstrating what can be done, which which benefits our local residents and local families and local participants in research first. And that's that's what this has been about, too. It's about creating resiliency because it never never in our 20 plus years of planning did we ever contemplate a pandemic. We contemplated a lot of other things pandemic never entered the conversation. No. OK, so let's let's start talking about this Global Leadership Institute in the symposium. First and foremost, I mean, you and I have been on the rubber chicken circuit for our whole lives. We've gone to all these events, you know, that's what what we've done in our community. And I'd never seen a community breakfast, a fundraiser do this. And this was well before first place was getting started. You actually, instead of having what we would call the kiss and kiss and cry moments where you had, you know, story after story that tugged at your heartstrings, you actually had I'll never forget it. You had scientists that had come into our community and we're talking about autism and all of these different things that were going on. And you moved from the emotional to the intellectual and it was a game changer. And so from there, move forward. You've you keep bringing these intellectuals together and and moving them towards the community that needs their help. And so I'm fascinated how you moved forward with this concept because it's pretty bold. Well, thanks, Julia. And and please understand that the heart of a mother is always there. And yeah, and perhaps the tears don't lead. But but I was crying just this morning. So, you know, it's it's it's what we do as leaders to feel it so passionately and to want to help others because it's taken us a good bit of time to get where we are today. The first strategic plan that I wrote about housing and property that we had lined up was in nineteen ninety nine. We want to help fuel a new marketplace of options. We believe that we are today with housing for special populations where Web was some 60 years ago, but we don't want to wait 60 years to get there. And we know that what we do in this space with housing and how it impacts the marketplace that it can be and will be good for everyone. You think about what those curb cuts have done through the ADA. That was 30 some odd years ago. How many of us benefit from that? And so when we design properties and design communities for people with different abilities, neurodiversity, sensory issues, you know, visual learners, auditory learners, different types of learners, we develop it for everyone. And we also can develop a kind of kindness quotient that is very present here and it starts with understanding. And so first place Phoenix is a seventy as an eighty one thousand square foot property, which can accommodate about seventy five people. And we operate a supportive housing apartment community here and a transition academy that has now graduated actually enrolled about one hundred students with autism and they are living in many cases beyond their dreams. Eighty one percent are employed after leaving the program. Eighty four percent living in their community of choice. And these are statistics that are unheard of in the in the space of autism. And it is again that power of that example that we wanted to do something with. So to have this number of people living here and people learning and people working and people participating in the community means that that we're creating a lot of content of what works, what needs to work better, who it needs to work for. And so that's where the research comes in. That's where the collaboration with Dignity Health and Creighton Medical School come in to prepare this next generation and current culture of adult care and those people who are going to care for us and those we love. It's where our collaboration comes in with Maricopa Community College District and Gateway Community College and and where the collaboration with all these employers come in. How do we create a neuroinclusive community and it's not singularly focused. And so when we created this Global Leadership Institute, we focus very specifically on training and education, on data and outcomes and public policy. And we're not going to change federal policy just from Phoenix, Arizona. It's critically important that we work with others and align data collection platforms and share what's working and lessons learned. And, you know, the right turns, left turns, U turns, all those things we experience because developing community, developing properties is expensive. It takes time and, you know, we want people to make their own mistakes. They don't have to make some of the same ones that that we have or that others have. And that's that's the importance of the Global Leadership Institute, bringing like-minded and also differently minded pioneers together to think together, to do together, to to be able to dream bigger and and differently because unlike senior housing today, we have an idea of what that means. But when people talk about neuroinclusive housing, we're just getting started. And and and that's why it's really important that we come together broadly as a community, and that's what the Institute is all about. So in the beginning, so you've been doing this for 10 years, which blows my mind in the beginning. Was it just all you pushing out what you're experiencing? Your experiences were and now are you getting people coming that are doing things in their own communities or is it still such a new concept? Both, Julia. We're not only getting people here who are doing things and pioneering and some really beautiful models in their own communities throughout the US, but around the world. So our Global Leadership Institute truly brings people not only via webinar, but physically here to Arizona. And and that is, again, what we can do through information sharing, through being more connected, through collaboration next next summer. We're actually heading to Leon France to present to the International Congress of Law and Mental Health because you think about people living in a community. Well, how do we keep people safe? And what do we need to know to keep ourselves safe, our loved ones safe? And what's their responsibility? So so the message is getting out people, parents, mothers. You know, we we love our kids and more and more of them are being affected by autism one in 54 today. And there's a huge generation of kids with autism transitioning to adulthood. But we have very few options. And and that's why it's it's important to not only develop a local community, but a global community that can come together and not spend the next 60 years figuring it out and having more options. We need to leap forward. And that's what we intend to do. Denise, I wonder if you would be willing, Julie and I are known to ask some curveballs unintentionally, but really just out of curiosity. You have told, you know, the first place story, the origin of first place. And what I'm hearing is success through collaboration. And a lot of this collaboration has been, as you mentioned, some of this existed before, some of this being the housing, the technology, the, you know, even just the idea of this, but not quite in this way. And I'm wondering if you would be willing to share a little bit about how you bring our build buy in from these collaborators when it's an opportunity that doesn't exist or had not exist previously. Mm hmm. You bring collaboration, collaborators together first because people want to collaborate, not everybody does. So you're going to get people at the table who want to collaborate. It takes more work because you're also focused on what you're doing every day. That additional collaboration takes more effort, but it's so worth it. And you attract them with a bigger idea, something bigger. We can't do by ourselves. And so one great example is attracting the interest of Amazon Web Services. Here at first place, we have not only homes for people who live here, but we have an R&D laboratory. This is home in every sense of the word and technology can help people in their homes. We are collaborating with the Amazon Cloud Innovation Centers. There are 12 of them around the world. One of them is here at Arizona State University, another at Cal Poly and a third in Vancouver. And right now we're collaborating with autism organizations in those other markets and we're bringing together major thought leaders and people whose whose first language is technology, but it's not mine. But we are on the ground, though, knowing what's needed. And so are they. And so you can you can interest dignity, health and create medical school in some of these bigger organizations when you are bigger. It's hard to attract people and organizations like that when you are perhaps a group home and serving four or five people at a time. It it so so there is power in numbers. But in answer to your question, it does take work and it does take effort. And people may not come to the table knowing exactly. You know, how to collaborate, but if they're willing, we can help teach them. So I love that you said this, the scalability of where you are attracting philanthropic investors, collaborators, all of that. When you talk about that, are you talking about your data, your financials, your leadership structure? I mean, it sounds to me like you've had to sell yourself. To come like come join us, because we've got things going. What does that look like? How have you presented yourself? Not just that it's a good idea, and this is important. Sounds to me like you really had to do some marketing. Well, gee, Julia, that's a great setup because actually my background is as a marketing communication specialist primarily for real estate and community development interests. So when I left the Dell Web Corporation at the age of 25 and started my marketing communications firm, that's what I focused on. Real estates, what I knew, and so those have been my clients. And I've learned a lot from them through the years. I've also learned a lot about credibility, about recognizing that those brands, my clients as an example, who came to the tables at the SART breakfast, but also to the table to help us figure this out. They knew their stuff. And so surrounding yourself with people and organizations who might have more to offer than what you offer and who might be smarter. I always talk about surrounding myself with people who are much smarter than I am. But also making sure that we get outside of, in our case, the disability bubble, making sure that we do understand peripheral vision, making sure that we understand what trisector leadership means because in order to fuel a new wave of housing and community options, we're not going to do it just as a philanthropic community. We can de-risk it, perhaps, for some others, but it's going to take the private sector. It's going to take the public sector. It's going to take all of us working together. And so what I relate it to oftentimes is the super highway, so to speak. Think about we have a lane for the public sector and we need to get some of that real estate out of their lane and help get them focused on the supports in the home. We need the private sector because they're going to always get there faster because they know how to do that, but they're not going to want to jump in until we can de-risk it. Then we've got the charitable community and that social capital that will invest in these big and new ideas. And think about the nonprofit. Think about all of you. You're in the HOV lane. You're the one that can bring more people in your vehicle. And get them going faster. So that's that for us is what we mean by that collaborative leadership style. It's going to take us all. And we published a report last year called A Place in the World fueling a new wave of community and real estate options for people with autism and other neurodiversities. I know it's a mouthful, but what it provides us is a guiding narrative because the other thing, Julia, that's needed here is to speak the same language, all those lanes, they don't all understand the rules of the road or what language we're even talking about. Each of them seem to have their own, but when you get it in a superhigh way and you all have to move together, you have to speak the same language. So we do that. This report actually has three medic categories, one hundred and fifty terms. We don't talk about people who are high functioning or low functioning. We talk about individuals who may have higher support needs or lower support needs. This isn't about creating a property for people with autism because we've established that looks different for different people. So once again, trying to create a bigger tent means that we can do more, include more people, produce more properties, fuel a new wave of options because that's what it takes to build a community. And as I said, you know, when I talked about Matthew, can't build a community just for one person. It's going to take us all and people, you know, they move, you know, few people live in the same place forever. And so we need more options as people, you know, choose to relocate to other cities and we need more options as, you know, as one property may not work and another one needs to. And so that's that's what this is about, Julia. Very inspirational. OK, we we don't have a lot of time left. But Jared and I are really interested on talking, having you share with us briefly how you're running this symposium, when the next one's coming up and given that we're still in covid, what are you doing in order to still keep that communication going? Well, as you may recall, Julia, we've planned this symposium three times. We planned it as a webinar. We were feeling a lot better. So we decided we would create the hybrid approach in person and and then a webinar. And and then we went back to webinar. Actually, now we are in a hybrid approach. And Julia, we are thrilled you're going to be a guest. And thank you so much for joining us. Our symposium is October 13th through the 15th. And for our in-person participants, they're full days for those who are joining from across the country and around the world. They'll be with us just in the mornings or the early part of the day, three to four hours, and we're kicking it off with John Donvan and Karen Zucker. They are co-producers of a new autism documentary called In A Different Key, and it is based on their Pulitzer Prize finalist book In A Different Key. And that movie does come to Phoenix in first place in the Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center, and it is a very inspiring movie. And it does also speak about community and all the things that happen in a community and and that idea of people who are different and and for all of us who want to belong. And so we will not only tee up John and Karen, but we also have a remarkable keynote speaker on Thursday the 14th. And that's Joan Fallon, the CEO of CureMark, who has an incredible journey and and her new book called Reimagining the Status Quo. And of course, we've got you and we've got 24 speakers and presenters and panelists, including the Arizona Department of Housing Director, the president and CEO of Autism Society of America, and we're talking about housing. We're talking about building community. We are talking about healthy steps forward and very excited to be featuring our new health and wellness initiatives here. Wow, it sounds fantastic. Yeah. And in a time when housing right now is so hard to come by for for anyone and everyone, you know, and to know that this housing exists for these individuals is is a critical need, you know, and in Phoenix is a large metropolitan city. And we often have guests from very rural communities and they talk about, you know, the lack of access and and equitable options for our rural neighbors. So that symposium sounds fantastic. Where where might we find more information? Is that on the first place website? It is on the first place website. Go to the tab on the Global Leadership Institute and you can download the itinerary and you can also register there. And for our friends in Phoenix, it's an invitation only. But let me know if you'd like to join us at the A.M.C. Theaters at the Arizona Center on Wednesday at 3 p.m. To view the autism documentary. And I also want to give a shout out to your point to Home Matters to Arizona. Again, another example of how we're aligning our interests with an organization and an initiative that's bigger than ourselves. It's all about redefining affordable housing in our state. And we call it affordable housing 2.0. And that is working with affordable housing developers throughout the state to create more options that include more people like those we serve. Amazing, amazing. Well, here's Denise's information. First place AZ dot or it's a wonderfully beautifully crafted website to begin with. But on this site, you can actually see what the structure looks like, what the the apartments look like. You can see the engagement of the residents and how they actually live in this beautiful, beautiful place of phenomenal dignity and protection. It's just so inspiring, Denise. And really, I always say, my life is so much richer because I've known you and you lead me to be a better person truly, truly. It's just been such a joy to see you go beyond what a normal life would be, because it's you've just been such a thought leader, and so we were super honored to have you on to talk about this concept. You know, sharing knowledge and not just the emotions, I think is that one of the next big waves that we need to grapple with in the nonprofit sector and not just be the the kiss and cry, but really the data, this is how it truly impacts us. And that's what it seems to me you you've you've been able to grasp on to. Well, thank you, Julia. And just so you know, of course, I would not be here if not for you. That's not true. And yeah, and our and our friends and our community and Jared for the nonprofit interest that you have led and that led us to to meet early on in this journey, and it's a very special community that you serve through the Academy and that that we're a part of. And so this is all about making all of our lives richer. And that's the beauty of community. So thank you for having me. And I hope more of your viewers will be able to join us. The recordings will be available for 30 days following the symposium. And our spring symposium will come up in April. We've not yet set those dates, but we will soon. Wow. OK, so you're doing this twice a year. We are doing this twice a year. Not to think it maybe once sounds good, but but you know, there's so much happening and and there's so many people who want more and want it to happen. So so we're doing our best to respond to the demands and the interests of the marketplace to amazing. Well, it's just been such an honor to have you on again, everybody. I'm Julia Patrick. I've been joined today by the nonprofit nerd, my nonprofit nerd, Jared Ransom. We're a nonprofit nerd. Yeah, and it's amazing. Again, we want to thank all of our presenting sponsors. Without you, we would not be here. You know, Jared, when I look at the screen, most of these folks have been with us since the beginning, which is pretty amazing. And so we want to express our gratitude, of course, to them. Hey, this has just been a fabulous way to kick off the week. And we are really, really excited that you could join us. Denise, Derek, I have a lot to think about today. And now thank you so much, Denise. It's so fantastic to hear more about what you're doing. And we've had so many people join us across the nation already. And again, this episode will go into our archive so you can access it at any time. So thank you for sharing your time and expertise with us this morning or after noon. Yes, thank you so much. Absolutely. And as we end every episode of the nonprofit show, we want to remind you to stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow, everyone.