President, Chief Executive Officer & Director of Brookline Bank, BROOKLINE BANCORP INC
Darryl & Co. with Aisha Francis
Darryl & Company is a series of short, Zoom-based interviews with local business and community leaders and Brookline Bank's ...
About Darryl Fess
Darryl Fess, president and CEO of Brookline Bank, has hosted a series of interviews on his program "Daryl & Company" with local leaders. In these conversations, Fess discussed the affordable housing crisis with Habitat for Humanity Greater Boston CEO James Kostaras, noting that the bank has a long relationship with the organization. He also spoke with Boston Age Strong Commissioner Emily Shea about the bank's partnership to train branches to better serve older customers. With Massachusetts Secretary of Labor and Workforce Development Rosalin Acosta, Fess discussed the state's low unemployment rate and workforce training programs. He interviewed Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology President Aisha Francis about the school's financial literacy partnership with the bank. Fess also spoke with New England Council CEO Jim Brett about the council's federal advocacy work, and with 2Life Communities President Amy Schectman about senior housing and the organization's COVID-19 response. Fess has described Brookline Bank as a full-service commercial bank with 25 branches in and around Boston that competes with both regional and large national banks. He stated that the bank's philosophy includes doing "whatever needs to be done to make things right" for customers. In a 2019 interview on Radio Entrepreneurs, Fess said he believes in a "no job is too small" approach and noted that he makes his cell phone number available to customers.
Transcript (15 segments)
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Darryl Fess0:12
Hello and welcome to Daryl and Company. Today my guest is Aisha Francis, President and CEO of the soon-to-be renamed Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology. Aisha joined BFIT in 2018 and has been presiding over the transformation of the college. Aisha, it's a pleasure to have you join me today.
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Aisha Francis0:34
Thank you so much for the invitation, Daryl. I'm happy to be here.
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Darryl Fess0:40
Aisha, the institute has a rich history in the city of Boston. For those who aren't familiar with it, can you tell us a little bit about how it was founded and what it has evolved into today?
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Aisha Francis0:54
Absolutely, it's my pleasure to do so. We were the result of the foresight and forethought of Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of this nation, who left half of his estate to the two cities that were nearest and dearest to him: Boston, the city of his birth, and Philadelphia, the city where he made his life and career from the age of 17 forward. In the aspect of his will regarding what to do with the funds for the city of Boston, he really asked that it be used to support the securing of apprenticeship. People would have to pay for the privilege of training under people who had a skill or a trade in the 1700s, and he wanted to offer that opportunity to more people. That is how the initial corpus of those funds was used for many, many years. There were some other stipulations about how the money needed to gather interest for a certain period of time, but eventually the city of Boston and the Franklin Foundation that was overseeing the funds came to an agreement about building a purpose-built school for the talent that needed to be trained in the city. That's how our 1908 building came to be. The city of Boston donated the land, and another philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie, matched what was in the endowment at that point that the city held. That is where the funds for this school came from, and how the school became a building and more of what we think of today as a college, as opposed to a revolving loan fund where people could petition the city of Boston for money for their training.
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Darryl Fess3:04
That is quite the fantastic history. I know that what the school does, it does a lot of great things. You think about apprenticeship and that's a great way for people to learn skills and improve their lives, so I think that's a great story. BFIT just received a major donation from the Cummings Foundation, and you're also going to be relocating the campus to Nubian Square. How will all of this benefit your students?
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Aisha Francis3:35
Well, we have been planning, and people prior to me have been planning, for a move from the South End to another part of Boston for the greater part of a decade, really thinking about multiple aspects. One is accessibility. Things change and evolve. Right now, more and more people are using mass transit to reach us as an institution, and we wanted to find a place where we would be near a mass transit hub to be even more accessible to a greater number of students. So that's one of the ways that our move to Nubian Square is going to help us. We will be right at the heart of the city of Boston geographically, and really just not even a five-minute walk away from a major bus transit station, close to Ruggles Station. So we're excited about that aspect of things. And then there's something exciting about a building being able to provide for our students a 21st-century building. We are an institution that trains people in the cutting-edge trades and technology, and we do that in a building that was built for the last century. So it's time for us to be able to have a site that's much more transparent, more glass, that's newer, that has really all of the accoutrements of a new facility. That's what we're excited about.
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Darryl Fess5:10
Yeah, that is exciting. I mean, I've been through the old building. It's a beautiful building, but you're absolutely right, it's functionally obsolete for a school and the types of skills you're training today.
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Aisha Francis5:22
And then the other part of your question is, what does it mean for us to transition into the Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology? It's such an exciting moment, such a wonderful vote of confidence from Bill and Joyce Cummings and the foundation that they represent. They are really people who value hard work and value the types of areas in which we train folks: construction management, HVAC, practical electricity, engineering. What this says to our students and to our faculty and staff is that they are seen, that people understand how important it is for us in our region and local area to invest more in people who want to work with their hands and their minds. A lot of the things that we train in, it's not easy to find that education locally. So that type of investment will make this education much more accessible to a broader number of students, so that we can grow our programs, expand our reach, and really become better known. So I think those are really important aspects of the Cummings gift and our move together, and we couldn't be happier about the moment that we're in right now.
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Darryl Fess6:40
Brookline Bank has partnered with your school to help students with financial literacy. Why is that important?
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Aisha Francis6:49
Oh, absolutely. Thank you so much for that partnership. The particular program that we have undertaken with Brookline Bank offers a series of financial literacy coursework, a whole series of trainings rather, to students who want to have a better handle on what it means to have resources, keep resources, build them for the future. That is a skill that all of us need. We believe in lifelong learning, practical education. It is an important part of making sure our graduates have the confidence when they are going onto the job market that they can negotiate their salaries in a way that they will be able to have enough money to be self-sufficient and to support their families. We want to make sure that we do our part to make sure they have a place where they can get their questions answered and feel like they're making good, sound financial decisions for the long run. Most of our students tend to be in their 20s, although we have students that are older adults in their 30s, 40s, 50s even. It's never too late to learn stronger financial management practices. So that's an important part of the education that we offer. We offer wrap-around education: you're getting your technical training, but you're also getting training in life skills and professionalism. Being a wonderful steward of your finances is definitely part of that.
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Darryl Fess8:33
I think that's fantastic. We're happy and proud to offer some of that training to your students. I can see how important it is. I think you probably have a bunch of budding entrepreneurs there as well, people that someday might own their own businesses, whether it's a trade or a different line. It's just one of the things that you do there that provides people with opportunity to live the American dream.
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Aisha Francis9:04
That is a very common path for our students and graduates. Some of them are already entrepreneurs, and others definitely open up their own shops, run their own practical electricity firms, engineering companies, and all sorts of lines of business. It is an opportunity to start one place and grow from here across the course of your career.
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Darryl Fess9:32
That's awesome. Aisha, thank you for joining us today. You have a great school that offers great classes and skills for students to get ahead. I'm proud that we have a connection with you guys.
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Aisha Francis9:43
Well, as am I. Thank you again so much for the opportunity to share a bit about what we're doing here, and thank you for the partnership over the past several years.
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Darryl Fess9:54
Thanks to everyone for watching Daryl and Company.