Megan: Thank you guys so much for tuning into today’s She Boss episode. I am extremely excited to be talking with Alka Bhargav with the Aum Foundation and many, many other things, but we were just talking offline about one of Huntsville’s most amazing and creative events that we will talk about in just a little bit; so, very eager to hear about that and all that is behind that. But before we do, thank you so much for joining us for She Boss. I really appreciate it.
Alka: Thank you for selecting me. I appreciate that.
Megan: Absolutely, I have known—I have admired you from afar for quite some time and have been fortunate enough to be in some circles with you recently with WEDC; now that we’re both members of that, I know you’ve been heavily involved in that, but you’ve been such an admirable force that I have always known and the horizon of Huntsville, not only an influential person, but someone who does so much good for our community and those who need help, frankly, and just need some additional opportunities brought their way. So I’m so excited to learn a little bit more about you and how you started everything with Aum Foundation. But before we sort of dive in what you do, just a little bit around your background and sort of where you’re from, how you came to, where you got to today, and we’ll go from here.
Alka: Thank you. Thank you for that kind introduction. So I am originally from India, and I moved here to the US in 1986. And I was at that time a dependent of a student, so I was not allowed to work. So the thing that I did most was volunteer all the time, and I was quick to realize that there’s so much satisfaction in doing something that helps anyone. So, for instance, I would teach kids how to read. I was active in different organizations, and then I decided to study some more. So I did a second master’s in communication, which I do great in communication; till it comes to my kids, and then everything fails.
Fast forward 10 years down the road, mom to two little girls, and then I get divorced, and I’m a single mom, and one of the most significant things that came out of that sort of tragedy in my life was to just realize how difficult it is for people who don’t have resources, because I think I was extremely underresourced at that point, because I did not even have a job. I was an intern at a company. I just started that internship when I became a single mom, and so from that moment onward, it was like, you fight for everything. You fight for survival. And those lessons have always been with me. And then slowly, I met my husband. I used to live in Seattle, moved here to Huntsville, Alabama, and we started our life with a pretty bunch. He had two, I had two, and life was hectic, but I still worked full time. Everybody does what they need to do to keep their family well.
Then there came a point where my husband had, in the meantime, started a company that, when he sold that company, I was like, ‘Okay, now finally, I have freedom to do what I want’, which was to really invest in women. Because to me, a woman is the pivotal figure in a family, in our society, in our community; she is the one who can impact change in a very significant way, and so women were my focus, and underresourced women who need the playing field never were a focus for me, because it’s not for lack of brain power that you need to be; it is for lack of resource. And I could tell you so many stories about how just a traffic ticket can derail a young lady. And so in response to different situations, our program has been very agile, and we have kept adding program after program.
So now, for instance, we do first-year college mentoring. We get juniors in high school. The original program was just for seniors in high school, but now we’ve added that. We’ve added several locations. So we have Decatur; we have Madison City, Huntsville City, Madison County, Selma, and Dallas County. That expansion has enabled us to reach so many more girls for a program that started with 10 girls and is now at 83 girls. We have made a huge impact, but there are still challenges. So I don’t know if that was one of your questions, but that’s pretty much a background on our kids, a typical kid of ours. So we have twice the federal poverty level as our upper limit for income for a kid to come in. We also ask for a recommendation from their teachers. We do a behavioral interview with them. Typically, never let go of a student. I’ve had kids come back to us long after they have graduated; I’ll send you a kid who spoke last year from on Bollywood Ice—amazing story. And she came to us three years after she graduated. So we continue, because I can’t let go of a kid. If you need help, you just come back, right? We’ll figure it out the way.
Megan: So, there are so many questions that I have there, and so much that the Aum Foundation does, which is just so amazing to me, but I think I will love for you to share that story, not to put you on the spot, but to share that story about that parking ticket, because I think a lot of people don’t realize how, and this is true for National Statistics, right? I don’t know the percentage of this, but a huge percentage of the American population is living paycheck to paycheck. You have one instance that unfolds, whether that be a medical bill you can’t pay or a traffic ticket into collections, and then it impacts your credit and the ripple effect that that potentially has. And also too, it sounds like you’ve seen this firsthand, but the generational impacts that something like that can have, so it’s not just helping one woman, one girl, with one thing; it’s something much bigger than that. So will you share one of those stories where it’s those little things that have such an—
Alka: So this young lady’s name was Reigny, and Reigny had an 828 on her SAT, which is awesome. And she got a full ride to ASU, that’s in Montgomery, Alabama State University, but the full ride was just her tuition, so she still has to pay for her books. She has to pay for her boarding. She has to pay for her food, for everything, and for her insurance for her car. She did not have any support. Let’s just say that. So she is there, and so she works full time, 40 hours off campus. One fine day, she’s in a hurry, she parks her car in the wrong spot, and the car gets towed. The child has nobody to turn to to get that ticket paid. So she loses her car. Now, she has to start missing part of her class to get to her job and still keep earning, and of course, your morale goes down; the GPs start going down. And then, on top of that, financial aid overpays her by $600. So then she goes to register, but they would not let her register because she has to pay that $600, so she does what I call quiet quitting, and she just moves back to Huntsville in a way worse shape than she had left. Now the $600 has been sent to a collection agency. She still does not have a car. She finds remote jobs. So her earning capability is impacted, and her morale is impacted. So by the time she talked to me about this whole situation, that $600 had become $869, so then our supporters and me sat together and we paid off that debt so that she could access her transcript and she could potentially ever think of going back to school, but having to work full time while you’re going to school is such a challenge. She is still not ready to go back. And that is one of the motivating factors for the next thing that I want for Aum Foundation.
Megan: I love that. I love that. So it’s crazy to me. I was looking at a couple of statistics, just getting ready for this discussion with you, just a couple of things to rattle off, and I would love your opinions on this. This is actually very exciting, but women now make up 51% of the college educator workforce, age 25 and older, which is huge, that has not always been the case. So definitely an increase in more women going through and getting education. STEM fields: women account for only 26% of the STEM workforce; still a big gap to fill, but it’s definitely increasing. And then also, too, I thought this was interesting: women hold 11% of CEO positions in Fortune 500 companies and about 30% of their board seats, so there is still a lot of room for growth there, and of course the gender pay gap is still beneath where we would want it to be, right?
Alka: Yes. Absolutely
Megan: So, I’m not sure where that’s hovering right now—probably 85 cents or so, to the dollar, something along that. But there’s definitely these specific programs that the Aum Foundation has designed to help bridge that early on to impact those longer-term things. So, talk to us a little bit about that.
Alka: Absolutely, so one of the statistics that really alarms me is the dropout rate of colleges. I won’t name any local university, but one university shared figures with me and 50+% of students drop out within the four year journey, and a huge percentage of the kids who drop out are underresourced girls. They are on Pell Grants. So, what happens to those girls? Let’s give that a minute. Those girls are of childbearing age, and so next, what problem do you have? You have single moms. Now, they’re looking for affordable housing. Now they’re looking for resources that you wouldn’t have to pay them if they were working and making their own living. Also remember, from what I’ve learned, I serve on the Huntsville Chamber of Commerce board, and we are expecting 40,000 new jobs in the next five years. How expensive is it, if you hire somebody from another state, another city, and relocate them here, and how hard is it to retain those people when they don’t have groups here? So, if we can get our local talent to have the opportunities and to be here to contribute to our economy, society, and everything, how wonderful is that?
So I don’t know if I answered your question, but this program has a leadership component to it. We are creating the leaders of tomorrow. This is a workforce development program, so that figure that you said about how many women are in CEO positions and how many are on boards, we want to increase the number of women who are in the C suite. We want to give them the self confidence to aim for that high office. And that’s why I have so many women come and talk to my girls. I want them to see women in leadership positions. And that’s why we have this component of job shadowing. So, we send girls, all the time, to different professionals, and I would love for you to join the team of those professionals so that you can pour into them. Because I’m telling you, our legacy is not going to be buildings. It’s not going to be statues. Our legacy is going to be the mind of these girls.
Megan: So talk to us a little bit about the components of some of the programming that Aum offers. I’m curious to know a bit about the mentoring aspect of it too. Mentoring is a big piece at Flourish we find extremely important and have done that since we started the business, honestly, so very passionate about giving back and figuring that out. And I’m sure you have experience in this, and I would like to talk to you about this in just a little bit, but having that one person in your life, man! who has been so influential. I’m sure off camera, we remember some of those professors or teachers that we can change things for you. So tell us a little bit about that.
Alka: So funny enough, I never had a mentor. I would find people that I had admired, and then I would start copying them. I’d be like, ‘Okay, I like the way she handled that, or I like the way she spoke’, so I would just mimic people who are doing well. But as far as the program and its components, there are several components, of course, one of them being mentoring, and to read that is the most critical and most important piece. But the kids really come in for the things they get. They get scholarships. They get a brand new laptop when they go to college. They get a TI 84 calculator so that they can do better in their SATs, and they’re taught. And our juniors also get a notebook, an iPad. So the kids come in for the things because they’re underresourced. The money means so much, and the laptop means so much. And then they do get this wonderful mentor to guide them. They get classes, because, being in Human Resources at Raytheon, one of the things I observed was, What was given to the high-potential employees? What kind of training were they sent to? I am like, ‘Okay, that’s what I want to give to my kids, because these are high potential students who are not going to have other people pouring this into them. So there are classes on things like emotional intelligence. That, to me, is a critical part of leadership, having emotional intelligence. So we do that: conflict resolution, budgeting and finance, time management, all these different subjects.
Megan: All the things that they should have had in high school.
Alka: So leadership, learning how to lead. Self-esteem—that’s another huge thing that all of our kids struggle with. All of us girls struggle with things like your appearance and just having a sense of self. Boys will apply for jobs that they barely meet any qualifications for, and girls will be stressed about applying for something that they meet 90% of the qualifications for. So teaching them how to navigate the world, teaching them to be self-confident confident and empowered—all of those things. Then they also get to job shadow, because you don’t want to spend four years doing a subject in which you’re not interested afterwards. So if they go to a job shadowing or a career information session, they know what a day in this job looks like. So instead of keeping on studying that and digging the hole deeper, well, let’s make a wise decision earlier. So one example that comes to mind is this young lady who wanted to be a nurse so bad, but she just wasn’t right for it, and today she’s a mechanical engineer, working for a huge company, completely out of poverty, breaking the generation poverty cycle. So that’s one thing. Then SAT prep, our SAT prep has resulted in a 2.9 point increase. You know that is—I’m telling you, it’s a big deal. That means more financial aid, better morale better entrance to colleges. The financial situation is much better, and you don’t have to retake certain subjects because if you didn’t do well, you would have to retake. So those are the main components of the program.
Megan: That’s amazing; a lot more underneath, I’m sure.
Alka: Yes
Megan: As far as this goes, because, I mean, that’s just fairly scratching the surface, but how amazing and impactful that you guys are doing that. I know a huge reason you’re able to do that is because of one of Huntsville’s most coveted events that happens every year, which is Bollywood. And seeing all of the pictures of the Bollywood event. It’s definitely been one of these events that if you miss it, you feel like you missed out big time. So don’t be that person. Don’t have that fear of missing out for sure, but Bollywood is this year on October 19th, the Von Braun Center. I won’t make you say it, but I’m sure sponsorships are open, and all of the money in the world can be brought, and that way you can get publicity around it. But talk to us a little bit about Bollywood and what people can expect out of that event, and just what it’s about.
Alka: So Bollywood, I am going to call it the ‘funnest’ fundraiser. It truly is. First, we girls like to dress up. And I saw that some people who came first time wore, like, gowns or something and they were like, ‘Uh, I wanna wear that.’ And so next year, they would be need all the funding, which is why I started bringing in vendors to sell clothes, so that they would really enjoy it. And then so we take a group of local citizens and teach them two choreographed dances, which they perform at the event. And they also raise money while doing that. So if one of the dancers is your friend, even if you give $10, just give them something. And so that they can build– there is a friendly competition so that helps them win that. Then you can expect amazing food, a DJ and just a blast on the dance floor, plus really inspirational speeches from some of our students. I mean, so far, I haven’t come back from any one of them without feeling so moved; even though I know the kid, I am there and I am feeling so moved, and just come have a great time and support a great cause. And then, on this August 3rd, this Saturday, we are doing a video for Aum and we have won a grant, and there’s somebody from North Carolina who is going to take a shot of the community on August 3rd, at 10am at the big Saturn rocket at the Space Center. So if you want to be famous, please come for that.
Megan: Then they are profiling you and Aum Foundation?
Alka: They are doing a video on the Aum Foundation, and this video film will be entered into a contest for the Alabama Association of Nonprofits.
Megan: Oh, great, so maybe it’s a chance to win some additional funding and opportunities?
Alka: We shall see, but I would love our community to come so if this airs before.
Megan: We will still push it on social for you, definitely. Okay, so switching gears just a little bit. I know the Aum Foundation is a huge part of your life, right, but I know that you wouldn’t have gotten here had you not had some influence in your younger life. I know you said you didn’t have a mentor growing up, but I would be curious to hear about your mom and how your mom was and how she influenced you growing up. What sort of planted that seed for you to want to play this role that you’re playing now?
Alka: So my mom is an amazing woman, without a doubt, and her heart to serve is just not something you see in different people. And actually her lack of being empowered—and I needed her to be empowered—were the motivating factors for me, especially in a role as the daughter-in-law, as a wife, there were cultural influences, for sure, but I still wanted her to be rebellious, to not put up with stuff. I would find myself being the defender of her at different times. And I was like, ‘This isn’t right.’ I can still almost remember the angst of seeing mom in the situation where people are saying things to her that they shouldn’t be saying. And I’m boiling with it, and I got into trouble for speaking up. I don’t know if you were at Women Honoring Women (WHW), but I spoke of that time when I was cast out for it.
Megan: Yes, I was. My mom and I were there. We watched you.
Alka: So, sometimes it’s a lack of seeing something that can motivate you, and sometimes it’s examples. So her example of serving and her example of not speaking out both influenced, and as I was growing up, some of the roles that you were expected to be in. And I found that because I was truly a dutiful child and all those things except for those moments. But I found that to be a drawback when I came to the US and I wouldn’t speak up when I was supposed to speak up. It’s like my idea is important, but I wouldn’t speak up and give that idea. And so looking back, those are the kinds of things that would hold me back, and I didn’t like that. To me, this is my opportunity to fulfill my dreams to discuss.
Megan: Yeah, absolutely
Alka: Sometimes, like I was just with a young lady who said she’s looking for a job, and I said, “Well, why didn’t you reach out to me earlier?” And she said, “Well, you’ve got so much to do.” I said, “I have nothing more important to do than to see you successful. Don’t even think that I have anything else to do; you are it.” So that’s truly how I feel; their success is where I feel good. So that’s all I want.
Megan: If you have the impact and the opportunity to influence something that may happen for that person, why wouldn’t you do it? Why wouldn’t we?
Alka: Exactly, and I think this whole community is like that. People step up and help out at all times.
Megan: So let’s talk about that. I say we end on a high note. What can this community do to help what’s next for Aum Foundation? Of course, you have Bollywood coming up, but there’s bigger things than that, right, whether it be through mentoring. A lot of these organizations that have their roots here really rally behind the next generation of women here. What is it that you would say you kind of need from the community to help further the mission of what you’re doing?
Alka: Well, let me just say there are three main factors that we have identified as the reason why girls are not successful. One of them being finances, and within finances, affordable housing. The second one is lack of support network, and the third one is mental health. And so putting all that into perspective, I have realized that we really need a physical building where our girls can reside, receive the support they need, and have all kinds of community input, like classes of different kinds, or maybe a job fair for them, doing actions, and providing resources that will truly level the playing field and take them to their goal. And so in the future, I would love it if you have a land to donate, if you have a building to donate, or if you would just like to partner with us in getting resources that will make this happen for our community, because truly, their success is our whole community success. It’s not just a personal success for anyone.
Megan: Yeah, absolutely, okay. Love that. We’ll end on this. You have had the opportunity to touch so many lives of young women and young people, for that matter, in the work that you’ve done. Looking back, what would you tell your former, rebellious self at a young age, whether that be to speak up more. What’s some piece of advice that you would give to the younger version of Alka, or maybe some other women who were watching this too?
Alka: I would say, first, listen to your intuition. Listen to what you hear from inside you, and listen to your pain points, explore them. What is my pain point, and what resource can I get to help get through that pain? And by pain point, I mean, are you scared to be in a group and advocate for yourself? Is that a pain point for you? Well, find a resource that will help you. If you are in this program, we already addressed things like this, but also learn to listen to yourself if you are in a bad situation of some kind. If you’re in a relationship that is pulling you down, learn to listen. Be an advocate for yourself. Find people who care about you. Look for a mentor. Look for programs. There are many programs, but you don’t know about them, so educate yourself. Go look for that thing that will help; it exists. Believe in yourself and believe that help exists for you.
Megan: I love that; thank you so much. Alka, this has been amazing, and keep doing all the amazing things you’re doing, and I know the community is rallying around you, but you’re just so admirable, and we appreciate everything and just thank you.
Alka: Thank you for doing this. You know, once you enter the Aum village, you’re part of Aum; you cannot leave. Three of you came in–
Megan: We are here forever. We are in.
Alka: That’s it.
Megan: You know what? I am very okay with that. Thank you so much.
Alka: It’s a together thing. It’s not a one-person thing. You know that.
Megan: It takes a village.