Andre Hughes: The Kingmaker

Liz Tinkham (00:18):

Hi, this is Liz Tinkham, and welcome to Third Act, a podcast about people embracing the third act of their lives with a new sense of purpose and direction. The third act begins when your script ends, but your show is just not finished. Today I talk with Andre Hughes, the kingmaker. Andre is the founder and servant of Powered by Action, a not-for-profit that provides innovative software solutions to other nonprofits to help them extend their reach and virtually connect all of their constituents. Andre’s third act sparked when he was in Kenya on a trip to the Kibera slum while serving as the head of Accenture’s Foundation. I first met Andre years and years ago during his second act. He had a long and distinguished career at Accenture serving many clients in the communications, media, and high-tech industries. Andre has also served on numerous public and not-for-profit boards and is a proud graduate of Purdue University. So Andre, welcome to Third Act.

Andre Hughes (01:15):

It’s good to be here. I was just going to ask you Liz, how many acts do we get?

Liz Tinkham (01:20):

Well, I think with you, you will be coming back when I’m doing like sixth act. So I just want to tell everybody who’s listening that, so I’ve known you for a while, right? So I didn’t get to the second paragraph in your bio. Talk about your days as a Zumba instructor while you were working at Accenture. So you’re a very accomplished guy and a great friend. So I’m really happy to have you on the show today.

Andre Hughes (01:42):

It’s good to be here, and I’m not going to break up any of my aerobics. But I’m happy to be here.

Liz Tinkham (01:52):

So for big turner that you are, which is another reason I love you. So your first act was at Purdue, so boiler up. How did you decide to go there and what did you intend to do with that degree?

Andre Hughes (02:05):

So Liz, in life as you know, it’s hard to plan things out, and I had no idea what Purdue University was.

Liz Tinkham (02:19):

Were you from Indiana or Illinois?

Andre Hughes (02:21):

No, I’m from Chicago.

Liz Tinkham (02:23):

That’s what I thought. Okay.

Andre Hughes (02:24):

I’m from the South side of Chicago in a place called Englewood, but I had this opportunity to go to what’s called a magnet school. It’s a college prep school. You test to get into it. At that time, there weren’t that many in Chicago, but one that existed on the South side of Chicago was Lindblom Tech and it’s still around today.

Andre Hughes (02:49):

It’s a very empowering school. And for those of us that are first generation college people, it was really the path for me and my family to get to that milestone of college. And so I had this incredible counselor, Dr. Wright was his name. And I was good in math and science as a lot of people, and he called me in his office, he says, “Listen, I got two opportunities for you and I’m going to send you to both. One is the Air Force Academy, and we’ve got these congressional nominations for you, and you’re going to have the opportunity to go and spend a week there and decide if you want to go there.” And he said, “The second opportunity is an opportunity at Purdue, and their minority engineering program. And they bring minority students into Purdue. You stay on campus for about a week.” And it changed my life. I didn’t know what an engineer was. What was clear was that, Dr. Wright, the high school counselor. He said, “Andre, this is your ticket to opportunity.” And that’s how it happened. I went, fell in love with both, and fell in love more with Purdue.

Liz Tinkham (04:15):

Oh, that’s so cool. Okay. So similar, in 1978 or 1979, I got invited to a, women in engineering camp at Northern Michigan University, which is up in the or Michigan Tech, I forget the name of it, up in the upper peninsula. And it was one of the first times I’d ever flown on an airplane. And it was really interesting, right? Because again, I had no idea what an engineer was, and it was all girls who were there. And I got out of there and I thought, this is my jam. This is what I want to do. So it’s nice to know that there were opportunities for both of us back then. So you get to Purdue and ended up with a degree in mechanical engineering. Is that correct?

Andre Hughes (04:59):

Industrial engineering.

Liz Tinkham (05:01):

Yeah. And what are you going to do with that?

Andre Hughes (05:03):

And I thought, boy, it would be really cool to help companies optimize their operations. And I was pretty jazzed about that. I loved business, and I love finance, and I love marketing. Some people would even say I was probably more of a business person than I was an engineer. So industrial engineering was a perfect fit for me, and optimizing workflows, and things like that. I thought, boy, this is a way to create some real results and some real value. And so we double clicked on that degree.

Liz Tinkham (05:43):

So how do you end up at what was then Arthur Andersen’s management information consulting division?

Andre Hughes (05:48):

So this is a longer story, but I’ll make it real short. There was this, much like Dr. Wright at Lindblom, in high school, there was this Dean by the name of Dr. Cornell Bell. And Dr. Cornell Bell was this exceptional larger than life human being in my life. And Dr. Bell was over in the School of Management, and somehow we met, and really connected, and built an incredible relationship. And he became the next big non-family member to provide counsel, mentorship, sponsorship, big word for me. And so he introduced me to this vice president at AT&T and I’ll never forget how he did it. He called me to his office and he said, “Make sure you’re here on time.” And he called this vice-president from AT&T to meet with the two of us and sitting there after the pleasantries, he just said, “Roscoe, Andre is the person that you’re going to hire.”

Andre Hughes (07:10):

I mean, he was a kingmaker. Dr. Cornell Bell was a kingmaker and Roscoe says, “Well, Dr. Bell, we don’t normally take bachelor’s degree individuals into our management development program at AT&T. We want you to have an MBA.” And he says, “This guy is the guy.” And he consummated that employment opportunity for me at that moment in that room. So I ended up going to AT&T. I was there for about four years, and then on to MCI. And then I’m getting my MBA from Booth, University of Chicago Booth. And I meet a partner at Arthur Andersen who says we’re starting a network consulting telecommunications business, and we don’t have anybody that understands it.

Liz Tinkham (08:03):

That would have been the understatement.

Andre Hughes (08:08):

And so that’s how it started, Liz. I interviewed with them, and we fell in love with each other. And therein lies my start in the management consulting division of Arthur Andersen.

Liz Tinkham (08:22):

Yeah. Which then becomes the Andersen Consulting, and then onto Accenture. Oh, that’s great. That’s so cool though. Basically it was a professor/advisor, really the sponsorship word is a good one to say, you’re going to make this guy employee because that’s going to work out well for both of you.

Andre Hughes (08:44):

Yeah. I trust him, I know him. I trust you, and I know you, and you both know and trust me. There was this other partner that you might remember, Michele Liberato.

Liz Tinkham (08:55):

Uh-huh (affirmative), I remember him.

Andre Hughes (08:58):

He ran Italy for Accenture and Michele would often have me fly into Rome or Milan, and he would sit me down with Telecom Italia, and one of their senior executives, and Michele would do the exact same thing that Dr. Bell did. And just two phenomenal individuals that you just can’t underestimate the power of relationships, and how those relationships when leveraged on your behalf will change dimensions of all of your next steps.

Liz Tinkham (09:33):

I think the lesson as well that I know you’re phenomenal at, is now that we both and many of our listeners are in positions to be the kingmaker, make the kings right, or the queens. And I know you’re a big stewardship person. I am too. And to the extent that I have literally told people, this is the person for you, take it, trust me, this is all going to work out. And it’s really nice to see people early on in careers doing that for people. And we need to keep doing it. You were one of the first to lead a big functional practice within all of our industry groups. And I think that’s where I came to know you. We did a couple of projects together, which was fun. So I have just a funny story to share about you because it’s going to be related to where I’m headed with this whole podcast. Which is I had a meeting with one of my clients that I invited you to.

Liz Tinkham (10:29):

It was a network discussion of some sort. And I had it, because I’m so type A, I had it completely scripted. I’m sure I had name tags on everybody’s seats. I had it planned down to the minute. Kathleen O’Reilly was with me if you remember her.

Andre Hughes (10:43):

I do.

Liz Tinkham (10:44):

You come in in the middle, and you were just going to say a few words, and you don’t say just a few words. You say like, I don’t know, 15, 20 minutes’ worth of words. And I’m dying in the back because you’re throwing my whole meeting off, like by the minute. And I have to step out, I’m so pissed off at you. And Kathleen comes out to comfort me and she’s like, “What’s going on. We’re way off plan.” And I go back in, and the entire audience is in rapture of your words, right? I called it the Pied Piper meeting, and I learnt a valuable learning from that whole thing which was, you painted a vision that my meeting wasn’t painting.

Liz Tinkham (11:28):

I mean, I think I had the mechanics, but you came in and really laid out the vision. And the meeting changed after that. And it was fine, right? And you’ve always been a great one to be able to do that. But you were just so inspiring to that group. And it was something that I needed to learn at that point in my career. And you got me to do it, even though I was really pissed off at you at the moment.

Andre Hughes (11:52):

I’m glad that turned out.

Liz Tinkham (11:56):

It totally did. Kathleen and I scratch our heads later, like we’ve got to learn what’s he drink every morning for breakfast. Where does he get it, like that charisma? Okay. Anyway. So superstar, you are at your career advances. You run several P&Os. Then the head of, I think it’s a US practice, right? Steve Rohleder asked you to take on the human capital role. Talk about that.

Andre Hughes (12:18):

Steve was our chief operating officer, and Steve and I had worked together years ago in Austin, Texas, for about two and a half, three years. And so we knew each other really, really well. We were great friends. And Steve says, “Andre, we really need me to ask you to do something that you’ve never done before in your career. And we need you to do it with our people.” And they had come up with this new role called human capital. And it had a lot of things in it. It had things like working with external affairs, in DC with legislators. It had a social responsibility that was linked to the Accenture Foundation. And then it had human capital strategy different than, HR. Which is. How do you plan Accenture for the future? What type of skills we need, what kind of people we need? And then it had DNI, diversity and inclusion in it. And so it was a collage of things. And he said, “We need to pull you out of the business and have you do this role.” I was like, “I don’t know, Steve, this doesn’t sound all that great to me. What did I do wrong?”

Liz Tinkham (13:36):

I would have thought the same thing because he wants to get pulled off P&O, kiss of death.

Andre Hughes (13:42):

That’s what I had been taught. And I came, and I talked to my wife, and some of my close friends outside of Accenture. And they were like, “Oh, Andre, this is the kiss of death. Don’t go for it. Don’t go for this rope-a-dope. Turn it down, turn it down.” And so I shared my concerns and Steve, “Oh, here is your return ticket back to the business. You’re in and out in two years tops, but we need your help.” And that’s how it started. And it was focused on the US. So I would be the human capital lead for the US, for those responsibilities. And I would report to Peter Nanterme who became the CEO of Accenture. And so that’s how it all started. And boy, I had no idea how this job was tailored for me. As an African American male, starting off in Chicago, on the South side of Chicago, very, very, very humble beginnings.

Andre Hughes (15:00):

And so to go from A to J to M, I mean, it was tough. And as I shared earlier here, there were some key people like Dr. Wright, Dr. Cornell Bell, amongst others who were key to making that progression for me work, and work in an optimized way. And so I was inspired by these men and women. And I was very thankful for what they had done for me. It was very clear. I remember after my first paycheck at AT&T, I invited Dr. Cornell Bell and Roscoe Young to dinner at the Ritz. And I paid for it. I was just very, very thankful. And so here was an opportunity. I had built, I think you could say somewhat of a platform at Accenture. And being in the global role, you’re known all over the place, especially when you travel as much as I did. But you build this platform so you acquire a voice and people listen.

Andre Hughes (16:14):

And so now you have an opportunity to maybe use that voice for something more than your personal success. Now you have an opportunity to use that voice, to create significance for someone else or success for someone else. That’s my definition of significance. So I leaped, just like I do every job and role, whole body in. And Steve told me, he says, “Look, Andre, before you do anything, I want you to go around and talk to our people everywhere. Take three months, go talk to them. Don’t create any plans. Don’t formulate any strategies, go talk to our people.” And when I did, oh boy, I was just blown away by what they said and how they felt. Long story short, they touched my heart. And so I gave them my heart, and I did everything I could with the voice I had to change the circumstances for all of our people in the US, and really our people around the globe.

Liz Tinkham (17:40):

And as part of that role you got a chance to sit on the Accenture Foundation. So what does that foundation do?

Andre Hughes (17:45):

Yeah. Well, Accenture is big on building. When you solve hard problems for customers, and that’s what we do at Accenture, we, we largely leverage technology to help customers do things that they can’t easily do themselves, and we learn and teach them how to execute with excellence. And so in order to do that, you have to build a significant group of people inside of Accenture that have the capacity to do that work. And so the Accenture Foundation was focused on what we did well for customers, that maybe we could do that well for communities. And so we called it skills to succeed. And so we thought that we would engage communities around the globe, and working through other nonprofits, help them build capacity in others. And that would create job opportunities for individuals. That would create economic growth and empowerment for the community at large. And so all of our projects that we funded were like that

Liz Tinkham (18:58):

As part of that, you had an opportunity to go to Africa. I don’t know if this was your first trip to Africa, but talk a little bit about that.

Andre Hughes (19:06):

It was my first trip. It was my first trip, and when I look back on it, it was another inflection point that would set the stage for actory. We had our practice in the UK, our consulting practice in the UK had identified a need with the African Medical Research Foundation. And this was primarily in Kenya, headquartered in Kenya, headquartered in Nairobi that works throughout Kenya, and even beyond the boundaries of Kenya to bring nurses to hospitals, and to equip those nurses so that they can provide better healthcare to people that needed it. And we all know that that Africa doesn’t have anywhere near the resources of doctors and equipment necessary to address the need for a continent of a billion people. Anyway, the African Medical Research Foundation wanted to train and get this. They wanted to train 20,000 nurses, and they had a plan to get it done in 100 years. I had never heard of a 100-year plan. Are you kidding me?

Liz Tinkham (20:25):

Oh my goodness.

Andre Hughes (20:31):

And these nurses had high school diplomas, that’s it. And they wanted to take them to the next level of nursing. And it was going to take 100 years. Our UK practice heard about it, brought it to the Accenture Foundation. We approved this grant where we would infuse money, and technology, and e-learning to more effectively transfer knowledge and know-how to these nurses, and do it in seven years. 93 years faster.

Liz Tinkham (21:02):

Yeah. Well, that’s a great metric. I was going to say a little bit faster than 100. All right.

Andre Hughes (21:07):

And so I was put in charge of that grant, and what an incredible organization. I went to Kenya to speak at the graduation of the first 89 nurses, not 90, 89 that graduated in that program. And I spoke at the graduation and I hadn’t seen anything like, first the continent. I mean, the beauty with the challenges and poverty. But in this particular instance, the families, the thousands of people that came, they couldn’t all fit in the auditorium. The auditorium was big. And so there was this outside area where there were tents for them and they were just elated. I had never experienced in my life, and still today, I’ve never experienced a group of people that are so beautiful, that are so humbled. I remember asking these nurses as we went from hospital to clinic, what else can we do for you?

Andre Hughes (22:15):

And they would say, you’ve done enough. It just blew my mind. When you look at the circumstances.

Liz Tinkham (22:21):

Right. I’ve been there. Right.

Andre Hughes (22:22):

Oh my goodness. They would go home, study by candle light because there’s no electricity and you’re asking them, what else can you do? And they say, nothing. Oh my goodness. If you did that in the US, you’d have a laundry list of more and more and more and more, and which just made you want to do more. And so that was my assignment, and who could have ever thought that it would be part of the catalyst to launch me into my third act.

Liz Tinkham (22:57):

Because they speak to you while there. I mean, I’m somewhat tying the, as I listened to you, the human capital role. You talk about, they got your hearts, you gave them your hearts and similar in Africa. And I know that’s going to roll into what you end up doing in your third act. So just to get to that, you retired in 2011, you’ve got 7 million airline miles. You’re exhausted, you’re planning to garden, but that doesn’t last very long. When you told me that, I’m like, “Oh yeah, that’s funny.” Never known you to sit still for more than 30 seconds. So you found Powered by Action, which tied those together. How did that come about?

Andre Hughes (23:41):

So when I was at Accenture, and so now I’m in Africa, a place where I had never been before. And you said it, Liz, my heart melted. And I had asked them to take me to… I wanted to see the beauty, so they arranged for me to go into the Serengeti. I mean, I wanted to see the calamity so they took me to these small slums, but I wanted to see Kibera. And Kibera, oh, it’s massive. And then we can’t take you there. And after this graduation program, and they saw me out with the people, and not inside with all the people that set on the program, they said, “This guy is really serious.” And they take me into Kibera. And no running water, no clean water, no sanitation, no electricity.

Andre Hughes (24:48):

This was, I don’t want to put down what these incredible people lived in, but it’s nothing that reminded me of anything that would be civilized. And so it was just calamity on top of calamity. And no roads, no security. All of the housing were basically made of tin butted together for miles and miles square. One to 3 million people live there. And my heart just melted. And it melted long enough for God to speak to me that day. And I became inspired to do something more. And I could hear this vision around, now it’s time for you to come work for me, and this is what I want you to do. And it was all about how do you bring together, this was the instruction, bring together the resources that already exist, but they operate in a very disparate way.

Andre Hughes (26:06):

So their full potential of solving the problems that individuals like these people need, they don’t get solved. So it was an inspired vision of uniting those resources, and then making those resources accessible. And so you’re right. I had no intention of ever starting a nonprofit. It never even crossed my mind. And every intention after millions and millions of miles, and incredible meetings, and things that we did together at Accenture, I was ready at 52 to just do nothing. I didn’t want to go play golf. I didn’t want to… Until this inspired vision. And ever since then it has captured my attention 24/7.

Liz Tinkham (27:14):

So tell us about Powered by Action.

Andre Hughes (27:19):

Like anything else, it’s a part of an evolution, and it’s like you start peeling the onion, and you peel it back one layer and two layers. And so as we start to bring these resources together, we thought we would collaborate. That’s a word that came to mind, that we would collaborate with other non-profits to do things that none of us could do alone together because that was what we heard in the vision. And then that evolved to building tech. Because when we started doing that manually, it was not scalable, like building a school in Ghana. It wasn’t scalable. Teaming with the University of Chicago in Chicago Heights at a Bloom High School to incentivize learning. These things helped hundreds of people, but they didn’t help hundreds of thousands or millions of people.

Andre Hughes (28:11):

And so the second evolution was how do we do this collaboration, leveraging technology and innovation. And so what we do now is we’ve built a pretty incredible software platform that helps people take or help nonprofits take their proven programming. So if you have a parental program that teaches parents how to parent, if you have a preventative diabetes program that teaches people that are at risk of diabetes how to prevent becoming diabetic. If you have a proven program, we help you take that proven program that’s developed and delivered in person. We help you digitize it to deliver it digitally and virtually to scale it by extending their reach to scale social impact. And so that’s what we’re doing now. We have about 25 parent programs that are in schools here in Chicago, where parents receive information about what they should be doing, and best practices, and tips about what they should do with their preschool child. This would have been ideal for my parents that didn’t go to college. My dad worked the steel mill. My mom worked at the postal service and they couldn’t help me with my homework. So this is a way of leveling the playing field by transferring knowledge and know-how to people without it. And so we work with nonprofits to take their proven programs, make them digital, and help them put that knowledge and know-how in the hands of more and more people.

Liz Tinkham (30:08):

In a really very simple way. Deliver it on their cell phone, deliver it on their home computer, or any way that they can best access it. Correct?

Andre Hughes (30:16):

That’s correct. I mean, there are some fundamentals, Liz, like that seven-minute thing years ago with AT&T. People that live on the South side of Chicago where I’m from, we prefer as kids be outside and play. I have to tell you; I didn’t develop a love for reading. I did not. And I was a slow reader, and you’ll find that on the South side of Chicago. And you’ll find that in many urban areas, and I was a top student.

Liz Tinkham (30:55):

You just weren’t inspired by reading. Which is funny because you think top students are usually big readers, but I hear you.

Andre Hughes (31:08):

My dad and my mom worked. My dad worked 16-hour days. My mom worked eight-hour days, but she took three buses and two trains to get to work. They didn’t come home and read to us. They didn’t have time. We didn’t develop that way. I saw them work hard. So I have a work ethic that is second to none.

Liz Tinkham (31:30):

I would agree with that.

Andre Hughes (31:30):

But when it comes to certain other things, I just didn’t pick up. It wasn’t a characteristic of my environment, let’s just say. And so the opportunity here is… But television is and watching YouTube videos is. And so what we’ve done is we’ve taken these proven programs and we’ve gone out and hired, now, you’d be surprised. We have a medical doctor on our staff now, who works with other health charities, works for us full-time as a medical doctor, but she’s also an executive producer who has worked with Discovery Channel and others.

Andre Hughes (32:13):

So we produce these digital programs. So they are embedded with video where people that aren’t great readers can watch and listen to, and mimic what they watch and listen to. As opposed to trying to suggest to people like me, that the only way you’re going to get this knowledge and know-how is to read it. And so we’ve built this capability, that infuses multimedia, and storytelling, and then we culturalize it. And this is one of the things that Dr. Sandy Pagan brought to our team recently. She says, “Andre, if we’re going to teach people how to prevent diabetes, and we want to teach women, in particular black women, the whole program needs to be culturalized for black women.” So in this program, all of the multimedia, all of the content is tailored for black women. And so we want to find ways with our partners to take their know-how, digitize it, put it in a framework of storytelling, and within a framework that is culturally appealing and resonates with that target audience, whoever that target audience is. If that’s somebody that’s Hispanic, then we tailor it that way.

Andre Hughes (33:41):

So transferring knowledge to connect people to the know-how is really at the epicenter of what we do. And its empowering nonprofits that have done that well with in-person delivery, helping them now do it digitally and virtually. And who would have ever thought that 10 years ago, that the vision that we received then would be applicable.

Liz Tinkham (34:10):

And so applicable now in the United States of America, because everybody’s online. I mean, you can’t get in-person instruction anywhere. And it’s interesting because I think about the not-for-profit that I’m most involved in here, which is around equity and STEM education. And we’re looking at what’s going to happen in this school year and same thing. Culturally, delivering math, science information online to immigrant populations, Hispanic, rural workers in Eastern Washington, et cetera. And the digital vision is perfect, and it is in business, but even probably more important to be able to get it to people who just can’t access anything anyway,

Andre Hughes (34:58):

It’s taken some time. We just brought on a big customer with Easterseals, and Easterseals, serves 1.4 million people, and we’re going to be working with them. They want to digitize their programming, starting with the programming that teaches governments, transit authorities, how to effectively work with people on buses and trains, that are disabled. They have a huge training program that’s very successful. That now will be delivered virtually, leveraging our platform, and all of the training associated with, how do you prepare a disabled person for the work world? Kind of like where we started back at Accenture around skills to succeed. And so, as we bring on these major institutions, we’ve had to strengthen our technology over and over and over again. And it’s a blessing to have the resources to serve in this way. I would have never thought that that this would be the third act, but I’m glad it is.

Liz Tinkham (36:13):

So I thought about naming this podcast, I’m not done yet, because that’s how I feel about my life. So what aren’t you done with yet?

Andre Hughes (36:24):

I think that we’re inspired to help millions and millions of people with the platform, and we’ve got a team now and we just had a conversation last week with a large corporation in Nigeria. And so I think it will grow. I know it will grow. And we’ve got one customer in the American Bible Society. I mean, they pass out Bibles and now they have a healing trauma program.

Liz Tinkham (36:53):

Wow.

Andre Hughes (36:54):

And they want to work with us to reach 100 million people by 2026. So there is a lot to do when it comes to making knowledge accessible.

Liz Tinkham (37:09):

I think that’s very good. So thank you for joining us. Where can we find you and where can we find Powered by Action online?

Andre Hughes (37:17):

Powered by Action is poweredbyaction.org.

Liz Tinkham (37:23):

Okay.

Andre Hughes (37:23):

And my email address is [email protected].

Liz Tinkham (37:34):

Yeah. And we will put that in the show notes.

Andre Hughes (37:37):

Oh, perfect. We’d love to talk to some of your listeners. Those that are aligned with the vision that we’ve received and the mantle that we’re running with.

Liz Tinkham (37:47):

Great. All right, Andre. Thanks so much.

Andre Hughes (37:49):

Thanks, Liz.

Liz Tinkham (37:50):

Take care. Bye-bye.

Andre Hughes (37:52):

Bye-Bye.