 Welcome, and thank you for joining us for another episode of the non-profit show. We are thrilled to have Heidi Jenenga with us today with Rising Tide Foundation. That's Rising with a Z. So for those of you that are wanting to Google that, rising-tidefoundation.com. Excited to have you on, Heidi, to talk to us about diversity, equity, and inclusion as it relates to our organization. Before we dive into the conversation, I want to make sure that you know who we are if we have not met yet. Julia Patrick is the CEO and the president of the American Non-profit Academy. She's missing today's glorious conversation, but I'm here. I'm Jarrett Ransom, your non-profit nerd. We are also grateful to have the continued support from our very gracious presenting sponsors. You can see those behind me and on the screen, but I'll say them aloud for you. We're so grateful to have the support from Bloomerang, from Fundraising Academy, your part-time controller, Staffing Boutique, the non-profit show, of course, non-profit nerd, and the non-profit thought leader and the non-profit atlas. So thank you to our presenting sponsors. Truly you are keeping these conversations. Thank you. Yes, Heidi, around the nation going, but as I was sharing with you earlier, Heidi, we have really branched out into an international market as well. So thrilled to have you here to talk about this very interesting and critical topic about diversity, equity, inclusion, and how we promote that in our organization. So welcome. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. And I'm excited to talk about this. It's something I'm very passionate about, obviously, for starting a foundation with, you know, specifically trying to make a change in the profession that I actually work in, which is the physical therapy market. Yeah. Well, tell us a little bit about how this got started, because before we went live, you did tell me about some of the goodness you've had in your life, professionalism, to be able to afford this opportunity. So tell us the origin story of Rising Tide. So I am a physical therapist and I had been practicing in the outpatient sports medicine world for about 15 years, sort of had reached most of my professional goals. I wanted to work with professional athletes. And I had done that and I rose to a leadership position as a clinic director. And with being a business leader, I, you know, had P&L responsibilities for my practices. And one of our largest expenses was transcription and dictation, which we were all doing back in 2006, all doing on pen and paper. And so I put my head together with a software engineer and we created an electronic medical record specifically designed for physical therapists. We launched that company in February of 2008. And you fast forward to today and we have over 850 employees. We have a little over 50% of market share. So needless to say, we've had tremendous success in the for-profit world with our with our company. And with that business success, it obviously allowed me to have some financial success as well. And one of the things that we did at WAPT was we really took the information and a lot of the data that we were collecting over the years and fed that back to our industry to let them know, you know, what are things, what are trends going on in the industry? And we did a big survey called the state of rehab therapy that we did annually. And every single year for the last, I think, six years that we've been doing this, the lack of diversity in our profession was something that rose up as a big issue for therapists that essentially were also blocking our ability to increase the volume of patients coming into our practices. And there's a lot of reasons, obviously, that, you know, patients don't decide to come to PT, but that we knew or we at least extrapolated that this was potentially one reason as well. And so knowing that I decided to, and after obviously everything that happened in 2020, it really helped to inspire me to actually do something. I had started a foundation in 2019, not really knowing what specifically I wanted to do with my foundation. And then it right through 2020, 100% inspired me to really try to make a difference in my own profession with changing that diversity factor. And so we have a scholarship program that's really designed to empower this new generation of BIPOC leaders in the physical therapy profession, both from entries coming into the physical therapy. So students coming in becoming physical therapists and then also current physical therapists who are actually going on to residency program, which is not a requirement for physical therapists. So they make this decision to do this, which helps them give a give them a leg up in terms of leadership. What a fascinating story, Heidi. I love that. And again, it shows to me, it proves that win-win scenario, right? When one opportunity really excels and it populates the opportunity for another opportunity, which is exactly this, the Rising Tide Foundation. So congratulations and thank you for you, your entire team and these, you know, the masterminds behind this, because the promotion of diversity, equity and inclusion, as you said, it's been an ongoing battle. But in light of recent changes and I've been saying, pandemics plural, right? We have this global health pandemic virus, but we also have social unrest. We have political divide. We have environmental challenges. So talk to us about how we might look at promoting diversity, equity and inclusion into our organization. Like, how does this, I guess my bigger question is, how does this become an everyday comment, right? Like, how do we really just infuse this into our culture? Yeah, well, first and foremost, it takes intention and then assessment as to creating the goals, at least this is how we went about it, creating the goals that you want to see within your organization and how diversity can really actually help help in terms of what you're trying to accomplish. So we know that, you know, diversity in general with your employee base really can make a difference in the decision making. When you get this more well-rounded 360 view of what's actually happening. You know, inclusion, to me, is something that every organization should be doing or should have been doing before this DEI sort of verbiage really came out. And this is, to me, is all about engagement. How do you engage every single member of your team into the purpose of what you're trying to accomplish with your nonprofit? Your core values that you set out to what it means to be a part of your organization and, of course, the making sure that you actually are living up to those to those values and working towards that purpose. And then, you know, the equity piece is sometimes can be, you know, very logistic oriented, like doing a review of, you know, your recruiting processes, doing a review of your, of course, pay, right, your pay scale amongst all of the employees that you have to make sure, A, you're balancing that out against some averages that might be in that same position in your local area, even across the board now, because many people are hiring not just in their own state and local area, but perhaps, you know, nationwide. So really making sure you're being competitive and also just equitable amongst those that are in your organization as a whole. So there's some really just tactical things I think that people can do. But for for me, I mean, it's really all of those things were to put together is just great standard practice, something that you should think about being as a great organization in general. Yeah. And I love that you say it really starts out with intentionality. That is at the base and it might seem a little basic. But that, as you said, like that that's where it starts is the intention to focus on this. Now, what about how might we prioritize this issue, the diversity, equity, inclusion issue when the reality is and we know this to be true. There are also many other competing issues of time, money, intentionality right along with diversity, equity, inclusion. So how do you focus on that prioritization? And then how can we really do that? So we we've identified we have the intention. But now how do we continue to prioritize this? Well, again, that intention is there. And if if you as the owner or leader of the organization feel like this should be a priority of the business, then it needs to become a priority of the business. And that means it becomes incorporated into your strategic strategic planning. Whether that's a goal specifically around people and what that means, what DEI specifically means, because it's very different for different organizations. It could be that you're increasing the the reach that you are getting, right? What what are the areas that your nonprofit is actually working towards? It could be that you're working more internally, right? That you're actually want to diversify the employee base. And so that takes different tactics. But, you know, just sort of blanketing. I want to do DEI in my organization is probably not going to work. It's, you know, that old adage of a is it an inch deep and mile wide versus going like a mile deep and an inch wide, right? To really make sure that you have that intention goes with goals and strategic planning in our in my in WebPT and our big organization. It's actually part of our overall strategic planning. So we have goals set against it, you know, every quarter, every month, every year for the five year plan, right with goals. So it's completely sort of intertwined with our business as usual. And that to me is when it truly becomes just part of doing good business, as I mentioned earlier. I was a part of a survey and they asked specifically about diversity, equity and inclusion in all parts of the organization as you're as you're speaking to, right? And so it's not just do we have a policy or are we intentional with this? It's, you know, how is this related to your programs? Now, how is it related to your governance, right? How is it related to professional development and funding? And then, of course, entire organizational capacity. And so, you know, for you to say, if this is an intentionality, it needs to be intentionality across the board. And I think that's a big key piece. You speak about it as across the board in many nonprofits, the boards that I sit on, there's actually now a DEI committee that, you know, helps to make sure that that subject is or that lens is being lent to any initiatives that come across, you know, as initiatives for the nonprofit. Are we making sure that we are looking through that lens? Are there questions that we're not asking? And so there's people that are always sort of thinking about that. And that could be within your organization, depending on the size of your organization as well. But yeah, it it becomes part of the fabric of your business or of your organization. And then it doesn't necessarily always take like it just becomes a way of doing business. It's not that you have to put 100 percent focus or, you know, such strong intentionality around it. But it's like a new muscle, right? You have to if you if you are not focused on it today, it's a new habit that has to sort of form and being part of the business as usual. Speaking like a true physical therapist. It's like building a new muscle or enhancing the use of that muscle, the range of motion for sure. There you go. I love that. Will you touch briefly on this, Heidi, about how your organization measures success? And I'm curious if we can talk a little bit more about that, in particular, how might we set goals and, to your point, measure our success against these goals? Yeah. So first and foremost, is getting data to know some standards or baselines that you want to move the needle on. So, for example, for us in in the physical therapy world, we know that based on the Bureau and labor statistics, there's about 280,000 employed therapists that were employed in 2020. And of those 280, 78 percent of them identified as white. Only five percent black or African American, 15 percent Asian and 4.4 percent Hispanic or Latino. And so when you compare that then to the census of that same time, right, we know that there are some big disparities in there, especially when we think about Hispanic and Latino, as well as African American or black. 13 percent, for example, almost 13 and a half percent of the U.S. census identify as black or African American, 18 and a half percent identify as Hispanic. So there's huge disparities there. And so taking that data and then creating goals around that is how we want to make a difference. And, you know, we we did that by setting a five year goal and then working backwards into each year, knowing that we're a new startup and it's going to take a little while to ramp up. So smaller increments of of change in the beginning and then slowly growing that to hopefully and when we do meet that five year goal in 2026. So, yeah, that's essentially how we we go about setting our goals, but it for us, it really starts with some data that has to be concrete that you can then play on within your own goals. There's another big one for us is the what we call the 90 percent problem. We know that 90 percent of patients in the U.S. that have a diagnosis, some musculoskeletal diagnosis are not getting into P.T. So only 10 percent of patients get in to see a physical therapist. We want to move that needle to, you know, five percent. And I mean, you could you're talking millions and millions of patients, right? And so that was a little more intangible because we don't know 100 percent that the only reason that people aren't getting into P.T. practices are because of the lack of diversity. But that's like what we call a B.H.A.G. or a big hairy audacious goal that is something that's way out there that's going to take a lot of people and a lot of intention to to make that change. But that's something that we also kind of target for ourselves. If we can move the needle on that, it helps the profession as a whole. More patients to satisfy all of the P.T. practices across the country and more people get the benefit and value of seeing a physical therapist as well. So I have to be honest, Heidi, I'm on that percentage of not going to physical therapy. For me, this is this is how sad it is, because just a couple of blocks away from my home is a physical therapy office, right? Like they're close, it's convenient. But for me, it's not convenient because the additional time that it requires to squeeze into my calendar, right? So clearly, I'm saying my time takes a precedence over my health. And so for you to switch that B.H.A.G. and to really achieve and I love that acronym B.H.A.G. And for those of you that might have said, wait, say that again. It's big, hairy, audacious goals. So it's kind of that really big stretch goal that you think there is no way in heck we're able to achieve that. But when you do boy, howdy, is there an amazing celebration? That's right. That's right. That's great. You know, it is all about elevating the knowledge to and bring more attention to the profession that I've been a part of for so long. That's been, you know, as a physical therapist, that was one of my the my hardest decisions to leave clinical care and seeing patients as I jumped out into this non-clinical role. But because of that, you know, instant gratification that I saw my patients having every day in my practice and getting better. But there's a few things that people don't know. Like we have direct access in every state, meaning that you can walk into your physical therapy office. That's down the street from you at any point in time without needing a referral from a physician. Your insurance company will pay for that. And so depending on your state, it may be one visit. It may be like in Arizona. It's unlimited. You can see as long as the therapist thinks that it is medically necessary for you to see them, they can write their notes and specifically make sure that you get the insurance company is paid. Or you can go and pay cash just like you pay your massage therapist. You can, you know, get out your credit card or you all it to pay in cash, too. They always have cash rates, but we are doctorate level professionals. We are the musculoskeletal experts in the field. There is no other provider that knows as much about your body and your muscles and your bones and your system as as a physical therapist does. So I'll just put a little bit of exclamation point on question a few more folks into into knowing what physical therapy is all about because we do have some amazing providers out there all over this country. And as I mentioned, there's close to 300,000. We know that there's about 30,000 practices, outpatient practices all across the country. And not to mention, you know, therapists working in hospitals and skilled nursing facilities and schools and everywhere in between. Now, I'm curious, Heidi, have you done. And as I say this, I'm thinking you have. So no pressure if you haven't, but some benchmarking of occupational therapists and how this, you know, measures to that. I know there's so many other modalities of therapy. You know, the other one that comes to mind is speech therapists, things like that. So how does physical therapy and what you're doing with rising tide compared to some of these other modalities? Yes. So the diversity is about the same, maybe even a little worse than some of the other professions, they're just a lot smaller. And I'll just talk about a little bit of a business strategy from a nonprofit perspective and something that, you know, we talk a lot about from the WebPT side is is staying niche to your core competency and growing as you continue to grow. And so while, yes, we could 100 percent start with PTOT and speech. We have grown at WebPT. We have a lot of data around OT and speech language pathologists as well. We call it rehab therapy. But for me and where we wanted to start, we really wanted to start niche and small and gain a following and gain some processes and practices that then we could replicate in other verticals or other areas like OT and speech. Right. They definitely go hand in hand. But just from a business knowledge and perspective and time to do something really well and get those sort of processes in place, we wanted to really focus on on the world of PTO, which is obviously what I can speak to as my core competency better than I could OT or speech language biology. But I will say we've had a lot of OT's and speech therapists come to us and say, oh, my gosh, when can we make this happen in our OT world? And so we definitely will be there hopefully sooner than later. But we really want to get going to, again, like I said, get these processes that we can then replicate faster and know exactly how to attack the problem and make sure that what we're thinking about in the scholarships are actually going to make an impact. So I believe they are. We've done our research ahead of time, especially working with a lot of universities in knowing that one of the biggest reasons that BIPOC students drop out of PT school and never become a PT provider is because of the financial burden. We know that student debt is just a huge issue in our profession as students go through the PT program because it is a doctorate program. So it's post-doctorate or I'm sorry, post undergrad. And so you already have this undergraduate debt. Now you've got to tack on two to three more years of graduate school to become a physical therapist. And so it's it's a it's a long haul. It takes a lot of commitment, but also takes a lot of financial commitment. There's just not a lot of scholarships and financial assistance out there outside of, you know, loans. And so this is again part of the emphasis of why we want to just start rising tide. What a great compliment to hear from these other verticals, you know, to say, when, when is it our turn? When can we get on this platform, too? Well, we don't have too much time as we wrap up the show, Heidi, and it's been fascinating for me to learn from you. And I'm sure many of our our listeners and viewers as well. With this remaining time, I would love for you to share with us. What does Rising Tide Foundation have in store for the remainder of the year? And, you know, let's talk a little bit more about these scholarships because I'm sure there's there's viewers and listeners alike that either have someone in mind or they themselves are are curious to take a deeper dive. So talk to us about about that. Of course, yeah, we offer two different scholarships. We offer a crust, what we call our crust scholarship. So we kind of have this nautical theme that we've we've got going on and Rising Tide. And the Crest Scholarship is specifically for therapists going or I'm sorry, students coming into the physical therapy profession. So going through graduate school, it is a $14,000 scholarship annually that can be renewed for three years, the three years of school. And so it makes a nice dent in their overall tuition and fees. And they we offer three scholarships today in the crust area. And then we have two scholarships, which we call our surge scholarship, which is specifically for students that are I'm sorry, physical therapists who are then going on to a residency program. And those are worth $10,000 or one year. Usually residency programs are one year. And so application processes there. We have a full application online on our website for both of them. The application for crust is currently open. We close that in August and then same thing for surge. And we actually close our surge scholarships in November. So we've got both of them open right now in twenty twenty two for our next cohort of students. That is impressive. Yes, very impressive. So for those of you that are wondering, check out online Rising Tide Foundation.com. And that's Rising with a Z. So for those of you that are watching the show, you can see Heidi's background, R-I-Z-I-N-G is rising. So rising dash tied foundation.com. You can find all of the information on the scholarships. You said Crest and what was the other name? Surge. Surge. OK, great. Yeah, I love the nautical theme. That's what what is the tie in there? I'm curious. Well, it just went with Rising Tide, the name. But I, as a as a leader, have always sort of quoted the JFK quote of rising tides raises all boats. It's been part of sort of my leadership culture, how I think about, you know, community. And so that was the sort of sort of preamble to why the rising tide name. And then from there, we've taken it just from a theme perspective throughout, you know, the culture of of of the nonprofit or our organization as a whole and to kind of taking that nautical theme throughout. I love it. Yeah, we have Beach Comers, which is our selection committee. We have like sandbar meetups because we meet with our scholars every single quarter and do some education with them. So, you know, little fun things that kind of ties everything together. I love that. Heidi, you have been fantastic. Again, for those of you that want to look more into the Rising Tide Foundation, you can definitely check that out. Rising with a Z dash Tide foundation dot com. Heidi Jananga and her team are fantastic and have definitely built this win win scenario for many leaders across the nation. And I love that you really have been, you know, practice what you've preached with this diversity, equity, inclusion. I can tell the intentionality. It shines through you. So thank you so much for that, Heidi. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much and I really appreciate the opportunity. We do have a blog and you can subscribe to our blog. So if you go to rising dash Tide dot com slash bog and there is a area you can subscribe to our newsletter, which is a monthly newsletter and to continue to learn more and potentially get involved in the future. Yes, I love it. I think I might want to be a beachcomber sometime. Well, I have to say thank you to Julia Patrick and of course to myself for being here. I cannot believe it, but we are marching towards our five hundredth episode and we do that thanks to our sponsors. So thank you so much to Bloomerang Fundraising Academy, your part time controller, staffing boutique, the nonprofit Atlas, nonprofit nerd and the nonprofit thought leaders. So again, thank you for your continued support to have amazing conversations like this one today with Heidi Jenenga from Rising Tide Foundation. If you missed today's episode or you want to go back and watch it or listen to it again, you can do that. We are on Roku, Fire TV, YouTube, Vimeo, just about any anywhere on your smart TV. If you just say the nonprofit show, we pull up. And then now we are also on podcast so we can be found on any of your podcast stations. So we've taken our episodes and we're also moving them into the podcast form. So check us out there as well. And again, thank you, Heidi. Thanks to you and your team and to all of you watching watching today and listening, please stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow.