Encore Engagement Trumps Volunteering, Corporate Exec Finds

For much of his life, John Arnold, 64, of San Francisco, earned a good living in corporate America with a resume that includes senior executive status at Seagate, Novartis, and most recently, Pepsi Chicago.

He retired a few years ago, but quickly learned that he wasn't quite ready for a life devoted to leisure. While not aching to get back into the corporate grind, Arnold was looking for something that would fulfill a greater sense of service to his community.

"I decided that my skills were still applicable and my experience would be beneficial and I wanted to identify an area where I might be able to provide some meaningful benefit and at the same time have that recognized in a structured way," he says.

"I had tried volunteering and my experience has been that that was not satisfactory, that you could wind up stuffing envelopes and things of that sort and that is not what I had in mind to try to use my time if I was going to be involved."

Arnold, an MBA, says his professional expertise includes an extensive background in corporate senior level finance and significant hands-on experience with process development and program management work.

A career in corporate America has also honed his diplomatic skills. "I have an appreciation of the implications of trying to make change in a large and complex environment," he says. "That is difficult. It has to be approached with humility. I have learned through first-hand experience that when you are changing anything having to do with someone's job you have to be very aware of the fact that for most of us there is probably nothing more important than what we do. So when you are making these changes you have to engage these people and bring them along."

Arnold turned to The Encore Fellowship Network, a program that originated in 2009 to tap into the expertise of Silicon Valley executives. The program has expanded across California, with similar programs now in Arizona and New York, all of which share the mission of identifying executives and other innovators who are willing to share their expertise to tackle stubborn social issues.

In The Encore Fellows program, participants work anywhere from six months to a year with stipends generally ranging between $20,000 and $35,000. Half of the stipend is paid by the California HealthCare Foundation and the remainder paid by the organizations that receive the expert help.     

After an interview and screening process, Arnold was taken on as an operational analyst and consultant in July 2011 for La Clinica Del Raza, an Oakland, CA-base community health system with 29 clinics in three counties.

"I am working in support of the CFO. One project is designing a process to improve their cash handling," Arnold says. "They have a lot of facilities and they take in a lot of cash. Generally speaking, in the finance and accounting arena, cash handling is a big deal. There are major compliance concerns."

Arnold has a one-year contract that requires him to spend a minimum of 20 hours each week working for La Clinica, for which he is paid $25,000. The contract expires at the end of July, but Arnold hopes to re-sign with La Clinica because he wants to be there when his cash handling strategies are implemented.

"I am in the process now of rolling out a design that I created, training down to the clerical level at their various large sites, and hoping I can get all of this done before my contract expires," he says.

Arnold says he hopes to be there for another year or two for the implementation, to troubleshoot the process, and to provide post-implementation assessment. "You become invested when you design something and you feel strongly that it is going to be a significant legacy benefit that is going to be sustained beyond your actual involvement," he says.

While he doesn't need the salary Arnold says the pay sends an important message.

"As a society and in any major enterprise we tend to have a greater respect for that which we are paying for," he says. "Based on my prior attempts to volunteer I found that absent their being some skin in the game there wasn't the corresponding commitment on the part of whatever organization you might be involved with."

That commitment takes the form of simple things like adequate work space, a telephone, a computer, and access to stakeholders and resources. "Without that, then you are basically put into an environment where you have to, more or less on your own, address those kinds of concerns," he says.

While receiving a stipend is important symbolically, Arnold says he is motivated by a sense of satisfaction.

"The opportunity to take my prior experience and to continue to learn and have the satisfaction knowing that what I am doing is making a difference is a tremendous satisfaction to me. In this country we need to think differently in terms of what retirement consists of and how you approach that from an expectation standpoint," he says.

"There is the opportunity to learn in a new area and learning is key to life. If you aren't learning you are dying."