Curiosity, Determination, and Joy with Dr. Melinda Day

Join us on this episode of the Lead and Live Well podcast as Erin Cox and Scott Knox welcome the incredibly distinguished Dr. Melinda Day. Dr. Day's career has included leadership roles in organizational development, non-profit management, higher education reform, and workforce development. She currently serves as the Chief Impact Officer at the Food Bank of the Rockies and as the Executive Officer of Metier Education. Tune in as Dr. Day shares her journey of curiosity and determination, from tackling systemic inequalities to broader community engagement, all while balancing her multifaceted professional life and her role as a mother. Dr. Day's candid discussion about her determination, drive, and the role of joy in her work is both enlightening and motivational. This is an inspiring conversation you won't want to miss!

Hosted by Erin Cox and M. Scott Knox
Edited and Produced by Stephanie Cohen

Transcript

Erin: Hey everyone, welcome to the Lead and Live Well podcast. My name is Erin Cox and I'm joined here by my co-host Scott Knox. Hey Scott, how you feeling today? 

Scott: Hey, Erin I'm feeling great. It's great to be here. 

Erin: Very exciting, and, and supercharged guest this morning. We're expanding our reach all the way out to Colorado today.

So that's exciting. Let me take a moment to introduce our guest and we're going to get right in it because there's a lot to cover. Dr. Melinda Day is a distinguished professional with over two decades of expertise in organizational development, non-profit leadership, higher education reform, and workforce development.

Her career has been marked by innovative approaches to education technology and a steadfast commitment to integrating workforce development strategies into higher education. Dr. Day's career has spanned the nonprofit sector, multiple higher education institutions and faculty positions, multiple startups, as well as consulting.

She currently serves in two capacities, because one just isn't enough. As the Chief Impact Officer of the Food Bank of the Rockies, and as the Executive Officer of Metier Education, where she leverages her expertise to create synergies between employers, workforce development organizations, And universities to foster sustainable degree pathways that recognize and value student work experiences. Dr. Day has multiple degrees. Let me highlight them. Bachelors from Tufts, Go Jumbos, Masters in Public Health from the University of Illinois, Chicago, and a PhD in Child and Family Studies from Syracuse University. And Scott and I know her from way back. 20 plus years at this point, but who's counting Melinda is disarmingly charming, deeply reflective, incredibly intelligent, and just all around a joy to be around.

So let's welcome Dr. Melinda Day to the lead and live well podcast. Hey, Melinda.

Melinda: Hello and thank you so much for having me join you.

Scott: It is so great to have you here, Melinda. There is. So much to talk about as Erin highlighted in the intro and we're going to jump right in. So, you know, one of the things that's top of mind for us and I think to others listening in is some of the choices you've made on your career trajectory so far.

So really interested if you can share with us a little bit about some of the choices that went into those changes on your journey, and what might have been chance versus intentional or something else?

Melinda: In reflection, I'd like to believe it was all intentional, but I think that that is false. A lot of it was opportunity mixed with an openness of, I don't know the answer. And I was always in search of, and my career, I think maps onto the quest of better understanding communities, better understanding society, better understanding myself, systems, how they come together.

And when you take a step back, you see that connective tissue. You know, I started with Jumpstart, and working with children and families, and it was almost one on one, right? One child, me as an individual. And How I even picked my major and I'm pretty sure, both of you might know this. I was an art history major when I started Jumpstart.

like I was all over the place. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I had very little direction and I started to do a program and what started as 1 person, 1 child. Turned into more. Well, more. What about more? And I started to look at the community I was in. At the time, it was Dorchester, Roxbury in Massachusetts.

I started looking at, you know, the systemic inequalities that I'm seeing without the language, right? I didn't, I didn't have all the language, but I had a deep sense that something Wasn't right, and I needed to figure it out. So the investigation led me down a path of, well, let's look at public and community health like a degree.

Let's look at the work that I could do to expand opportunities that I was able to sort of generate with jumpstart. Let's look at the role education plays in economic mobility and outcomes in communities. I would say it snowballed, you know, that quest for knowledge, that quest for engaging communities led me to a lot of different opportunities.

I think I get myself into trouble, so to speak, because I'm quick to say yes. When I see the through line and I'm quick to see that through line and so lots of choices, but really a lot of openness to there wasn't one path that I could be on that was going to help me solve for the inequality. I was seeing.

I knew I needed to know more and do more to bring it together. But if they stayed in one lane, I was going to miss something or I thought I might miss something. So I kept broadening and expanding and that leads to sort of where I am today. 

Scott: You know, hearing you summarize that, Melinda, I'm thinking about It makes so much sense the way you described it like that one to one relationship and a way back at jumpstart up to and through kind of the more macro the ecosystems, but kind of this consistent through line of wanting to, Solve problems and that mixture with the curiosity of like, what's behind the problems and what are the potential solutions to addressing, you know, those challenges, those myriad of challenges that that face either individuals, families or wider communities. 

Melinda: I think that dissatisfaction with the sort of answers I was being given. So I would say problem solving investigation is at my core. And you know, why startup? Because I didn't feel like there was a solution addressing the thing that based off of all the pieces I'm putting together, it was going to address it in the way that I thought it needed to be.

So it really is, the more holistic version of You know, how can people self actualize? How can communities thrive? There's a lot of pieces to that, and to your point, Scott, it means I needed to go down many different lanes and in many different fields in order to try to formulate a comprehensive answer 

Scott: Mm. 

Erin: I would love to follow up on that, because I think one of the many things that's so interesting and impressive about your background is that it does cover so many different sectors that most people I feel like choose. Like, maybe a pass in one. So I'm in higher ed or I'm in startups or I'm in nonprofits or I'm in consulting and sometimes there's some flow between them, but I think it's pretty rare that one person could be so successful in so many of those settings.

And multiple times over. multiple startups, multiple nonprofits, multiple higher ed institutions. So tell us a little bit about the strengths that underlie all of that. Like what, what are Melinda's superpowers and how can we get some of them? Just kidding. 

Melinda: Dogged determination, a dislike for the answer no, a deep, unwavering, Belief that I can solve a problem. I mean, it's, it might almost be right, right on that cusp of hubris, right? Like, I think I can do it. Like, I think I got a chance. uh, And I view it more as if anybody's going to stop me, it's going to be myself. do think that there's that edge of, let's go, like, let's, let's keep driving towards the answer You know, I drive because other people can't Like I can push because I know I'm trying to solve in theory in general for people who don't have or didn't have or struggling at the access and the resources. or are struggling with the ability to solve for the problem right? I have the luxury, the privilege of sort of being outside, looking in trying to support, and, you know, poverty doesn't know how to rest. low paychecks, don't take time off. Right. So, I think a lot of that drive was, you know, my background is, my dad grew up in housing projects in the Bronx. My mom, an immigrant at 15 from a Caribbean island. It's like, you know, from minute one, it was like, go, go. Cause none of this takes time off.

None of this is something that you can lean back and just hope it happens. You sort of have to make it happen, sprinkling a whole big ol competitive side and you know, you, he, the devil can't chase me, you know, can't, can't, you know, I'm out running it, right, like it's, that sort of edge, again, right on that cusp of like, are you okay?

Yeah, yeah, I'm okay, but, you know, it's that drive that I think allows me to always see the opportunity and go for it. So yes, it is a strength that might be my downfall, but right now it's working out. So we're going to say it's a, it's a strength. 

Erin: Well, I'm hearing dogged determination. I'm hearing drive to, to serve and solve. I'm hearing a certain level of urgency. And what you're offering up, in part, because of your access to information and a certain level of of privilege made of made available to you by your strengths by your parents commitment by the way you engaged and I wonder if there have been times or there are times when those things work against you 

Melinda: Oh, I think I get myself into situations all the time. I mean, right on that flip side of opportunity is like, what'd you sign up to do? Luckily, I would say, you know, another strength is I'm real good at weeding out the good from the bad. Like, I do think I have a real strong understanding of people.

And I can sort of read a situation a little bit quicker than most, so I don't get hoodwinked. But I do find myself, you know, Why am I, currently a chief impact officer and still consulting? Because every time I try to get out of consulting, people pull me back in and I, I can't say no, right? I can't ignore the opportunity.

Both it's the way my brain works, but also most of those opportunities are attached to innovation, are attached to the thing that might actually. Solve the problem, if not for a community for, you know, a system that isn't working quite right. also like, oh, gosh, how many hours in the day do you have? you know, do I take a deep breath? But can I, you know, be at rest and at peace? That urgency is so important for all the reasons why I mentioned, you know, like tomorrow doesn't come for some people and I think I have a skill and I think that skill should try to solve issues. You know, I'm always, there's always a thread going around all of the many other things that I am involved in, not including volunteering, right? Like I have a life, I have a small child and I also have this urgency. exhaustion is, is a word that, you know I have used, it can be exhausting to do all this and to keep driving so hard, especially when sometimes.

You're the only person on the bus driving, right? Like, you're, you're, you're driving alone because people haven't come along. For example, higher education, I got involved in workforce development in higher education over 15 years ago. And at that time, these were all novel concepts that degrees should more align with work.

Yes, there were apprenticeships. But that was plumbers, that was HVAC, you know, it wasn't early childhood, it wasn't K-12. There was a standard way of moving through a college and you either passed or you failed. And you know, I kept saying, well, why can't work count? I don't understand. Because they're out of my sight?

But I was on an island so it was really hard to link up and to connect. And there was a minute where, you know, I was sort of treated like, you can't do it. That's crazy. And proving people wrong adds to the exhaustion.

Erin: Yeah, I could, I can hear that that dogged determination was maybe even tuned up just a little higher in those moments. And it's going to have a price at, you know, at the, at the end of the game too. I really appreciate you sharing that and recognizing the role that our strengths can play when, you know, maybe expressed to extreme in your case for all the right reasons. 

Scott: This is all tied in, Melinda. When I think about you as a composite in terms of a leader, a member of the community, family member, I am immediately reminded of joy as one of the things I experienced as a superpower for you, joy in connecting with others, joy in community, joy in problem solving, you know, joy in the urgency even as I'm, as I'm reflecting on this conversation right now. And I'm curious, as How you think of joy as one of your superpowers, if you do, and how joy has influenced your journey.

Melinda: It's so interesting you say, Joy. I am, you know, born and raised in New England. I was like, oh no, I'm dour. Like, everything is bad, nothing is good, right? Everything is wrong. Like, I celebrate very little, focus on all the wrong things we need to fix. So it's so interesting that you sort of note Joy, because in many ways, I love what I do. I love how I do it, right? Like, if anything, where it becomes most conflictual and hard is when there isn't that excitement, that joy around, yeah, it's a super big problem, but we got this. and I think that does come from early formative experiences.

Both of you are part of it. But I remember being an AmeriCorps member, and I remember the early days of Jumpstart. And my biggest takeaway is to be in service of, there is an element of joy. There is an element of, isn't it amazing what smart, capable, committed people can do all together?

And that, it has never left. So, you know, when I think of myself as a supervisor now as a leader now, you know, yeah, let's have a little fun. We're gonna work hard and I won't say we play hard, but understand that that hard work has so much meaning in so many ways and I, I enjoy it. I try not to do things I don't enjoy and I try really hard to find the joy in the work, even if it might be a little bit of a slog or a struggle. 

And. I have a lot of gratitude around that. Not many people can say from basically one of their first jobs ever. They've had the role models, the mentors, the peers, the colleagues that are all on their own journey. But in that same vein of really looking to what they can do for communities, society, the future, and enjoy it.

Scott: 100%.

Erin: I think you just made the Founders of AmeriCorps very proud. 

Melinda: Right? Like, I'm pretty sure that's what they wanted.

Erin: I think so. 

Melinda: Like, it just started. Like, I got tired of working at the library. And y'all seemed fun. how it all began. yeah, I'm a geek. Yeah, I'm a nerd. Obviously, I really like school. I like it so much I never really left, but it was the community of learners. There were a whole lot of people that were like, no, like, what, can I do with again, the access. How can I do something with it?

Scott: Mm. 

Erin: The power of community, both what you contribute to it and what you get out of it, that feels like a through line for your career to this date. I also. I want to circle back to the choices you made to go to get your multiple and again, very impressive degrees. because I think a lot of our listeners are debating or have been debating whether or not to go back to school for various things.

And we all know that. Costs are skyrocketing and there really needs to be a return on the investment across multiple aspects of our lives to make that worthwhile. So I'm just curious to hear in terms of your choice in particular, I guess, around the masters and the PhD, what do you, what were you hoping to get out of it going into each of those?

And what did you end up getting out of it? Sometimes we don't know what we don't know when we go into those kinds of situations. So, I'm just, I'm curious to know, like, what your thought process going in. How did you, how did you land on those decisions and coming out of it? What were the transformative aspects of it?

Melinda: So I would say another through line is when I have a question, I will research. I'm of a certain age that the internet was a thing, but it wasn't like what it is today, right? There weren't. Things you could get for free very easily, right? There were still libraries that you had to sort of get the book out.

So when I have questions or crises of faith or moments that I need to know, I sort of solve that through school, right? Like I needed somebody to curate the collection of books. I wasn't going to find it on my own, but I had big questions. So the master's degree was. All right, I'm working at the individual level. I'm looking at children. I now have this degree that qualifies me to be an early childhood educator. My parents aren't jazzed about that , given the cost of a private four year degree. What can I do with this? How does this work? The macro level, right? How does this, how do I expand beyond the individual or like even the school level? 

After that, I did take, I'll say, a little bit of a break. Not really. I was in another program and I didn't like it. And so I paused. I was like, I don't need to get a doctorate. I have a master's degree. I'm doing the work and that pause led me to a job and it was in that job that I got confronted again with the macro like there were questions I had and they were trying to solve for one way. I'm pretty disagreeable so I'm pretty sure at the time I was like, I don't think they're solving for it exactly what I would.

But I didn't have an answer. And I was like, well, I could study more about this. I also recognized that By that time, I loved training. I loved to teach. I loved to facilitate. And I was like, well, college might be a thing I'd want to teach it. Right. I might want to just be a faculty somewhere. So I knew to do that really well I probably should get a PhD. So it was both solve for a problem. And this other track, this being in higher ed might be something interesting. 

It's a long winded way of saying that I wouldn't trade my education for the world. It is how my brain works, it's how I make sense of the world. My mind needs to sort of constantly have that learning. Now, of course, there's ways to do it for free. Now there's ways to sort of engage without having to sign up for a full degree. I'm competitive enough that I do like the piece of paper, you know, like I like it, but I have had tremendous return on investment.

I don't think I'd be in front of you as a young-ish woman of color, from Norwalk, Connecticut. I don't think I'd be on your podcast. I don't think I would have sort of done all the stuff that I've done over all of my years without it. It does come with a pretty heavy cost. My student loans are no joke.

In a way where it's disappointing, What is so incredibly valuable, so incredibly needed has put me in a position that might harm my child in the future because it is such an onerous debt. Again, I would be hard pressed to say, no, don't get it or go there and do something different because it's been so valuable and I recommend when in doubt, the learning process is huge.

I wouldn't take it back. but I also understand why people are pausing or not wanting to sign up for that debt, because again we've not solved for it. There is not a, there's not a solution coming down the pipe. There's not a reform happening anytime soon. I'm not a politician. But I swear if I could run on one platform and one thing it would be to change the current debt people find themselves in for getting this education, the cost of higher education, and the way in which it negatively impacts again mostly low income, mostly people of color who mostly women, right, who are engaging in this kind of learning that they probably do need some level for their career, but it's a double edged sword.

Scott: Mm hmm. I think of how many people are kept out of this problem solving space at the community level due to both the high expense of education and decisions that we have to make, saddled with debt. And then the other side to it around the social sector catching up with compensation, you know, and how do we compensate? I mean, these are two hugely, kind of systemic issues that keep so many talented brains and hearts out of the social sector.

Melinda: I mean, I'm about to get off this podcast and like, go figure that out because so spot on to the point where, you know, we talk about economic mobility, we talk about, cost of living and to know people have to decide between food and their, you know. Federal minimum wage job. It's like these two things are not, they're not anywhere close to the people making the policies that people were really thinking about it. 

Erin: Yeah. Two things are coming to mind. Bringing me back to my UAspire days, There is such a gap in understanding between the policymakers and those who are experiencing it. And we saw this firsthand when we stepped into policy work at the state and federal level.

I can't tell you how many conversations me or my colleagues had with either key policy advisors and or. Actual congressional leaders who were shocked to learn that the Pell Grant no longer covered the majority of the cost of a student's education. 

Melinda: And you only have 12 semesters to use it, so by time you get through community college, which isn't two years FYI, especially if your work exhausted your Pell, and now you're supposed to transfer to a four year institution, even at a state school today, that is a whole lot of debt you start to rack up, not including If you wanted something beyond and I know what people are saying is, well, you don't get to go beyond. Get out of here with that.

Erin: Mmm.

Melinda: Knowledge should not be contained. And I, again, for some people that degree does matter because again, I got these degrees. So that there is not a job. I can't have There isn't like I'm not confined to one field, one area, one kind of work. That's the flexibility of a degree. That's the transferability of some degrees. 

Scott: Mmm.

Erin: I want to plant a seed for you, Melinda, I would like you to consider adding a political career to the various sectors that you have dabbled in and led because–

Melinda: I'd be a terrible lobbyist! 

Erin: Lobbyist? No. Elected officials, more what I was thinking, to be honest, and I'm sure some of our listeners are as well. So feel free to bother Melinda when she tells you how to get in touch with her about, branching out into, 

Melinda: Running for politics? Oh my goodness, I can't imagine. I say that, but who knows, if opportunity presents itself, I'll be mayor of Denver, not a problem.

Erin: Dogged determination and a drive to serve and solve. That's what we need in our elected leaders. So I'm just planting the seed. 

Melinda: I can't afford it!

Erin: We'll come back. We'll fundraise for you. We're good at that. And a little joy. 

Scott: That's right. 

Melinda: Yeah, it would be a good inaugural night. Like, let's be honest, we'd have a good time. I don't know about governing, but at least the party would be really good. yeah, I mentioned it. I was like, in my future life, I'll be like deputy mayor. Like, I'll be in my 60s or closer to 70 and that's when I'll do it. And it's like, I don't know. We'll see. 

Scott: I can totally see it. I can totally see it. This is recorded. This is on record. This could be the first time that, Senator Day,

Erin: Exactly. Senator Dr. Day MPH. 

Melinda: Yeah, wow. Senator Day, MPH, uh, what is it? 2028, yeah. 

Scott: There you go.

Erin: Love it.. Great. Let's get going!

Okay. Melinda, you, you've mentioned the, the little human in your life and we've been talking a little bit about the blending of work in life as it relates to certainly student debt and, and, and life choices. So tell us a little bit about how your approach to blending work and life has evolved over the different phases of your careers.And like, where are you right now on that?

Melinda: Actually, a really good question. Before having a child, it was like, you go to work and then you're home and it doesn't really blend. Of course, that is not true. And now that I have a child and he is of a certain age. He absolutely has come into my office. 

Not just is he more present in my work space, but also at home, my work is more present, and I think I've made a concerted effort. To make what mommy does outside of the home more visible, right? Like, actually right now I have to finish this email. You know, I think kids can think stuff magically appears, right?

I've started to show the effort behind some of the abundance we have and talking about the role work plays. I don't know if I ever thought even when he was a baby that I'd make this sort of a point that like mommy's a boss doing boss things, right?

But I think as I start to see this maturing child becoming a pre teen, it's like no, he needs to know and ideally understand that hard work matters, that your mom can put together that Wayfair furniture and also have to send that email and also lead or partially lead an organization and I'm consulting and that's what the business trip is for.

And that's why, you know, you're not going to see me this time or that time. I'm starting to make that very transparent, because I think his concept of what parenthood is, motherhood, womanhood, is being shaped by seeing what I'm doing, and I think it was a little hidden., so I think in the, I would say the most dramatic change over the past couple of years is. I'm not superhuman. Let's actually start showing the humanity in what is being asked of leaders, what's being asked of the work world. 

And the concept of that, for a small child, sometimes I've even said, don't do this, right, like, in the future, ideally, you're putting stuff down, or, you know what, I'm not gonna work now, I'm just gonna be present, but I've had to make that transparent to him. 

Scott: Mm. 

Erin: I really appreciate that approach. and I think we've been on similar trajectories with like, co parenting through divorce families. I think one of the things that I've realized in my new setup, with my, my fiance, and we have two boys, I realized that I was saving all the housework for when they were back.

Cause I was like, I gotta get my work done when they're, you know, when I have mind space, but then I realized that they were only seeing me cooking, cleaning, sorting and folding laundry, you know, and my partner does a good amount of that stuff as well, but that's what they were experiencing. And while it made me kind of more available to chat with them or, you know.

Be available to my work, but I think sometimes what they see you do for 5 minutes might be what they think you do all day. So I started to kind of share that or blend a little bit more and talk more openly about the work because there's still a part of me that's so efficiency focused.

And I'm like, when I, I have to do the work when I have the best mind space and and when they're not around because it is the more distracted environment, but at the same time. Like you, I want them to understand that there's much more to that than to, to the work and to what we're able to make available.

Melinda: I mean, my kid, a couple years ago, so he, you know, he's older now, but He was outside playing with some of his friends and I hear him running inside like somebody's hurt. We need a doctor. You're a doctor. And I was like, what are you talking about? The person who's hurt? His mom is a nurse. I was like, sweetheart, get the nurse.

Like what's going on? But he really didn't even understand I was a doctor, but like what kind of doctor? And I was like, oh, because I never talk about it, right? Like, I never talk about the fact that I have a PhD and this is what it means. He just knew that I was a doctor. 

It's almost not fair that I hide the kind of doctor I am and it's almost not fair that, you know, he sees me just sort of tidying up when there's this whole other part of my brain, this whole other person that I know is integrated, but was really segmented from him. 

Scott: I think that resonates, you know, even as someone who doesn't have young people in my house, just thinking about how I show up from my partner and friends, in and around work, I have a couple of kind of quick, rapid fire questions because there's a few things I've been curious about. Our first question is, what's your earliest memory of what you wanted to be when you grew up?

Melinda: Again, I was an art history major. I was a computer science major. I thought I'd be like a teacher or a doctor, but that's just because that's what people said. I guess I wound up being both a teacher and a different kind of doctor, again, we're all of a certain age and of a certain sort of cohort where, you know, I was in that girl power, but there were still boy toys and girl toys.

Right. There were still things I couldn't even ask for in my home because that's what boys like, like it was still really gendered. So if it's really gendered, you know, my mom was a straight up secretary, went to secretarial school, right? so I didn't really have a huge concept of the world because the world was still struggling with sort of women do this, So as I got into college, and again, wider world, bigger world than I ever knew, that's when I started to, sort of broaden my horizon, but I didn't know any women CEOs, I didn't know consultants, I didn't know black female PhDs, never met one, right? Like all of these things were not things I've encountered until higher education and until I sort of started to ask more questions. 

Scott: That is so on brand. All right, second. On a typical night, how many hours of sleep do you get?

Melinda: Oh my gosh, I was just talking about this with my boss. Like I was just talking about this. Uninterrupted, it's maybe three to four. Maybe.

Scott: Woo. 

Erin: That is what we call a sleep debt, according to my new whoop gadget.

Melinda: You know, everybody keeps telling me this. I would say interrupted, maybe I max out at around six. I will say though, even in my youth, I am one of those people that if you had nothing, you could fall asleep on your own and wake up on your own. I was at best seven to seven and a half hours. Always a morning person.

Scott: All right. That was, that was my guess. Third and final, you indicated earlier you're a coffee drinker, for our listeners, how are you drinking your coffee these days?

Melinda: Okay. So it has recently come to my attention that I am not a volume drinker. So I always assumed I'd get a medium coffee. I have known somebody for a very long time and she's like, I don't know why you order large or medium anything. You at best have two to three tablespoons of coffee at a go.

I drink it almost black, like a splash of something. Ideally non dairy. And at my own home, I have to do a sort of single serve, like Nespresso, because I actually just don't consume that much coffee. If I make it through a few shots of Nespresso a day, shock. It'd be shocking. But it's the same for water. It's just, like, any beverage, I'm just Maybe sleep deprived and constantly dehydrated. 

Erin: Excellent.

Scott: Intrinsically energized.

Melinda: Sure. 

Erin: Voraciously ready to learn and thirsty for many things.

Scott: That's right. 

Erin: So you started out by telling us about the multiple lanes. That you've explored and kind of part of your career trajectory has been about figuring out the intersections between these different areas that you've been exploring and taking that kind of dogged desire to to serve to solve and to learn and applying it across all these different areas.

So when you look to the future, and you've got I would argue, a long career still ahead of you, if you want it, you may not, that's okay, but as you look to the future, what, what else are you curious about? What else are you starting to get itchy to solve?

Melinda: Well, now a political campaign so I can solve for the student loan debt issue. You added that to the list. Great. 

Erin: I just wanted to lock that in. 

Melinda: I would say I am still really dissatisfied with how early childhood education is, is addressed in our society as a whole, both on the educator side and, you know, as a parent, as a caregiver, that just still seem really inadequate, especially when you think of how much it costs, like, hold up, what am I paying for?

And why can't we come up with a better, different model and put the same thing for health care? This is starting to sound like a political agenda. I see where you, where you both are coming from. But so, you know, can I solve for health care? Can I solve for student loans? And can I solve for how we treat early childhood education in general?

If the pandemic taught us anything. Parents aren't teachers. It's a different skill set. I cannot teach my child, although I'm a trained teacher. I cannot. We asked to do that. It's not women's work. It is the work of highly trained individuals for whom many have multiple degrees to do it, and we treat it like it's nothing, and that in the absence of a teacher, a mom will do it, typically, and that is the Outrageous to me.

So those are three pretty big buckets. Higher education is there because I said education, but everything I've solved for it's not finished. The needle moves slightly, but it certainly hasn't gone to the place in space where we can say, Oh, we're done.

Let's focus on something else. So I would say what that means for my career. I don't know. I know how I'm going to end. I will retire as a professor or faculty. I really did always love teaching. That's like at the very end. Again, I'll be 80 talking about child development, right? Like, I'm going to be that sort of older Wise woman being like, what are the kids doing on whatever is TikTok nowadays?

Show me the dance. Like, I can't wait to be 84 and rockin' that classroom. But aside from that. I might not have all the energy I used to have, but I got a lot of years 

Scott: Yes.

Erin: have a lot more energy than most of us and please promise to sing all your lectures. I think that would really lock it in.

Melinda: Right. I just would hope that I could, between now and my, you know, what I know I'm going to end on, round out what I know, ideally sell for a couple more problems, right? Maybe one of the three I mentioned. And I know that the world my child will be in when he's my age right now looks different, not because of whatever new floating self-driving car, but because of some of these systemic issues.

It's not an issue anymore, right? Like there's no more of the nonsense, and we've at least cut through some of it, and people are treated fairly. You know, people have access to the food they need, right? And I would hope that in the next 20 odd years, I can solve for a little bit of nonsense. That's my campaign slogan, put it on a t-shirt, it's happening.

Erin: It's happening, it's happening. I've already taken the liberty of starting your website. So we're good. 

Scott: Just made the first donation. Small. But…

Melinda: It's okay. Every dollar counts, Scott. Every dollar. 

Scott: That's right.

Erin: Think about the leverage that she'll be able to create. 

Melinda: Well, I mean, always a pleasure. I know we're, we're short for time. You can call at any time. Why I say this is truly it is both of you that put me on this journey, talk about choices. I paid attention to what seemed like compelling people. That was it, didn't know you. That is truly how the story begins.

And I have talked about it at graduations, right? Like when I keynote spoke and I talk about, I took a chance on what seemed like a friendly face talking in a language that resonated with me. It was specifically you, Scott. Erin, we did meet slightly after, but Scott recruited me into Jumpstart and that is truly how I became a doctor, how I, like the dominoes fell after.

Scott: Oh my gosh.

Melinda: Yeah, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you.

Scott: So exceptionally generous, but. 

Melinda: Fine. Be humble. I know you know now, but at the time it was. What is this? It was like a breath of fresh air in a place in space where I was, I won't say lost. I'm never lost. I was just thinking about other things. And it just was that fork coming into the road. And I chose to follow this human named Scott, who seemed nice. Like literally that was what? Why not? 

Scott: Oh. So, so generous. But mega points to compelling people, yes. 

Erin: So, Melinda, how can people find you? How can they get in touch? If they, if they want to learn more or work with you as a consultant,

Melinda: Sure, so there's two ways. Of course, find me on LinkedIn. Always easy to get there. I don't know the long version of what it is, but search Melinda Day, PhD, and I pop right up. And then I would say my consulting company, Metier Education, does have a website, Metier Education. com. and that's another way to sort of see what I'm doing.

But, yeah, I would say LinkedIn is the easiest, and I'm always up for a connection. And I reply to even the inquiries trying to get me to open a franchise. You know, laundromats. I love to connect, and I'm not kidding. Sometimes it is about opening, you know, a Dunkin Donuts, which I really should out passive income.

Erin: She's open to it all folks. And also accepting donations at drday. com. No, just kidding. We haven't launched that yet.

Scott: Dr. Day, Melinda. It has been such a pleasure. I want to be a future constituent. I want to be a future donor. I want to be a future registrant in your courses. This has been a great way to start the day and thank you for joining us.

Melinda: Well, thank you both so much. And yeah, I'm wishing you all the best. This is, this was fun. This is very much fun for me. So thank you for asking about my journey and I'm wishing you all the best on this because I'd listen.

Erin: You brought us all the joy. Look at that, Scott. Listener number two. Secured! Ha ha ha. We love you, Melinda! 

Melinda: Thank you so much! Have a good rest of your day. 

Scott: You too. Bye.