Ken Bacon (00:00:00) - Okay.?



John Coe (00:00:01) - Welcome, Ken. Okay. I've overviewed your background ?
and in the introduction, your life and career are very impressive. You ?
founded Railfield, a multi-family investment firm after a long career at ?
Fannie Mae. Please, please describe your role and responsibilities at a ?
high level today. At,?

Ken Bacon (00:00:17) - At Railfield??

John Coe (00:00:18) - Yes. At Railfield.?

Ken Bacon (00:00:19) - You might say that I kind of function as the,I ?
guess young people would say, the original gangster, the OG here. My ?
partners really do most of the, the heavy lifting. John Siegel does the ?
acquisitions, Todd Watkins, overseas Asset Management and administration. ?
My role is really one of opening doors as I've been in the industry so ?
long, so it might be for funding. I found us deals at times, some deals ?
off market. I've helped bring in some investors. and our investment ?
committee usually is me and John. You know, John does a deal. We sit up ?
and talk about it. We go through the pros, the cons. ?

John Coe (00:01:13) - Just two of you??

Ken Bacon (00:01:14) - Yeah. Two of us. Okay. because there's three ?
partners, Todd will weigh in if there's gonna be a huge asset management ?
challenge mm-hmm. , he'll weigh in. But most of the time the front end, ?
it's, it's me and John. Okay, like I say, Todd will weigh in, for ?
example, if it's a deal that's gonna require like a lot of renovation or ?
it's a tax credit deal, uh, where, you know, sure the manager's gonna be ?
an issue, but when it, when it comes to going through the, the numbers ?
and everything mm-hmm. , it's me and John. And it's not as much a formal ?
process. It's kind of an iterative process when they start looking even ?
before we get to the best and final. Sure. Hey, I'm looking, uh, you ?
know, we play, we don't go outside our market footprint selling, do we do ?
that??

Ken Bacon (00:02:01) - So usually, you know, when he mentions the place, ?
I know the market. So it's really about the specifics of the deal. And ?
it's usually, uh, because we, we're all lenders, we're very conservative, ?
so I don't have to worry about anybody doing anything stupid. We walk in ?
the door like, we're not gonna lose money. We're kind of different from ?
some real estate people. A lot of people go in, sure. How am I gonna make ?
money? First thing we do is like, we're not gonna lose money. So it's ?
really, uh, John really discussing what are the downsides of this deal. ?
Yeah. Uh, and again, we don't even have to go into a lot about the ?
financing because John's one of the best underwriters I've known. Great. ?
So I know that part is down. So it's really about the,?

John Coe (00:02:43) - Well, I wanted to just get a high level now. I want ?
to get into more details later on, on your company and really the ?
rationale behind why you've been in lending so long. You're now in ?
equities and buying mm-hmm. , that's, that's another piece. Mm-hmm.  mm-?
hmm. . Because a lot of people with your background wouldn't stay in ?
lending, stay in their lane and not get into the equity side of the ?
business. So that's

Ken Bacon (00:03:01) - What Sam Ze told me to do.?

John Coe (00:03:02) - Exactly. Well, that's interesting. We'll get into ?
that Uhhuh . So, uh, let's, let's go back to your origin story. Yeah. If ?
we could mm-hmm. . So tell us about your origins, your youth and parental ?
influences. Mm-hmm. , I understand you grew up in Houston, Texas. Yes. ?
Talk about that. Uh,?

Ken Bacon (00:03:17) - I grew up in, uh, Houston, Texas at a very ?
interesting time. You know, I was born in 1954, so, uh, I grew up, uh, in ?
a segregated society. Uh, and when I tell people that a lot of times they ?
almost read to start giving me sympathy. But I had a wonderful childhood. ?
I wouldn't trade it for anything.?

John Coe (00:03:34) - So what did your parents do? Uh,?

Ken Bacon (00:03:36) - My father was a physician. My mother was a school ?
teacher. Wow. Uh, they were both in, in their families, you know, among ?
the first to go to college. My father was an only child. And, uh, my ?
mother.?

John Coe (00:03:47) - How did he get that opportunity??

Ken Bacon (00:03:49) - Uh, you know, it's kind of interesting. Uh, my ?
father's story is, is fascinating. My father's parents were, my father ?
was born on a plantation, a Taylor plantation in the Pinola County, ?
Mississippi.?

John Coe (00:04:01) - Really??

Ken Bacon (00:04:02) - And his parents were part of the great migration ?
north from Mississippi. His parents. And indeed, uh, a lot of my ?
grandfather's family left Mississippi. Some stopped in Memphis, some ?
stopped in Gary, Indiana. Mm-hmm. . But they were really scattered from ?
Gary all the way up to, to the North Shore like Waukegan, Illinois. Sure. ?
And my father's parents started out in Chicago, but they ended up in Lake ?
Forest, Illinois. Yeah. Where they were domestics. My grandmother was a ?
cook housekeeper for one rich family. My grandfather was like the ?
chauffeur major Domo for another family. And so my father grew up, uh, ?
attending public schools in Lake Forest, Illinois. Uh, and that accounts ?
for his, uh, accounted for his accent. He had a very, my father sounded ?
like Walter Cronkite. He had this kinda Midwestern, uh, uh, accent

John Coe (00:04:56) - Chicago

Ken Bacon (00:04:57) - And, uh, uh, his education. He was, uh, you know, ?
he grew up among the richest people in the country. So my father was very ?
well, uh, acquainted with, I guess now people would call it the classical ?
western cannon in terms of literature and music. Uh,?

John Coe (00:05:16) - Where did he go to college??

Ken Bacon (00:05:17) - Undergrad? Uh, well, it's interesting. When he got ?
ready to go to college, uh, some things happened in high school, I think ?
that influenced him. Uh, when he was at Lake Forest High School, the ?
smartest male student was my dad, really. And the smartest female student ?
was a Jewish woman, Ruth Cohen. And the American Legion would ?
traditionally give awards to the best students and make a big deal. And ?
they wanted to mail them their stuff cuz they were upset that it was a ?
black girl in a, in a, and a Jewish woman, a black guy, and a Jewish ?
woman. And the head of the school told the American regent basically to ?
shove it. But in other words, if you don't treat them like you treat it ?
to other people, we won't participate. I think that's one of the reasons ?
my father ended up going to a historically black, uh, college.?

Ken Bacon (00:06:06) - He went to Fisk in Nashville. Uh, and at that ?
time, Fisk, along with Howard and Morehouse, were considered like the ?
elite black schools. Right. So he went to Fisk, uh, then he, this was in ?
?1941, world War II broke out. So he, uh, went straight from college into ?
medical school at Maharry, which is a black medical school in Nashville. ?
Really. And, uh, um, and ironically that's where my brother ended up. ?
Despite the fact my brother went to Stanford. My brother ended up going ?
to Maharry, uh, about 30 years later. Uh, so it was kind of a, uh, kind ?
of went full circle. So, you know, you had my dad, like, and, and, uh,?

John Coe (00:06:48) - Why Houston? Why'd he go to Houston??

Ken Bacon (00:06:50) - Well, that, that brings in my mom. So my dad, like ?
I say, his family, you know, uh, his roots, the Chicago area, I think ?
everybody thought he'd go back there. But he met my mother. My mother was ?
visiting a friend cuz my mother's from Houston. And she and my dad met, ?
and it was a whirlwind romance. And when they got married, he followed my ?
mother back to Houston. Uh, and my mother's background trajectory was ?
radically different from my dad's. Uh, my mother, uh, was from a, a ?
Creole family. Uh, her parents, Louisiana migrated to Houston from, uh, ?
Louisiana. And it's a pattern, again, same thing my wife's family, I'll ?
talk about later. Uh, and my mother's family and, uh, my wife's ?
grandparents, there was a sexual use, they called Frenchtown, where the ?
Creole families from southwest Louisiana settled, uh, because of ?
segregation. Uh, they ended up building their own Catholic church, our ?
Mother Mercy. And, um, up through the sixties, you could still go there ?
in French. You know, you walked down the street. French was a language. ?
So my grandmother, when I was growing up, uh, my grandmother and her ?
friends, when they were together, they were speaking French.?

John Coe (00:08:08) - So Cajun French

Ken Bacon (00:08:09) - World. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They, that, that, that ?
was their, that was their language. Even though they, they did not like ?
to be called Cajun .?

John Coe (00:08:17) - Okay. They,?

Ken Bacon (00:08:18) - They, they were Creole. Uh, that's interesting. ?
And, uh, um, what's

John Coe (00:08:23) - The racial mix of that

Ken Bacon (00:08:24) - Group? Well, that's the thing. They were very fair ?
for the most part. Very fair-skinned, uh, like mulatto, like an ?
appearance. Right. And there were some who, frankly, uh, you, they'd have ?
to tell you they're racist, to be honest with you. So, like, my wife has, ?
uh, you know, cousins with blonde hair and green eyes. Uh, and, uh, um, ?
you know, so my mother's family, they were like, you know, a lot of them ?
were very fair skin, very Catholic. Uh, my father was Baptists. So, uh, ?
and say, I like to stress this because people ask me later, why do I ?
major in anthropology in college? And I said, growing up when I would go ?
to my grandmother's house, so, you know, you know, you would hear them ?
speaking in French. My grandmother lived on the borderline between a kind ?
of a black neighborhood and a Mexican neighborhood, Denver Harbor.?

Ken Bacon (00:09:24) - And so right across the street was a garage. Mr. ?
Canals, where they were speaking Spanish, there was a grocery store next ?
door, uh, owned by a Chinese family. They're speaking Chinese. Uh, you go ?
to mass at Mother Mercy. In those days, the mass was in Latin. So I told ?
people in the weekend, I'd hear five languages. Wow. I'd see all these ?
different groups and, uh, you know, I would just sit around and listen. I ?
was kind of famous for, uh, uh, just hanging around people and listening. ?
How many languages do you know? Uh, I know some French, uh, I studied ?
some in school. Uh, uh, but I, I still know a lot of the sayings in ?
French. Sure. They, they were taught, they were kind of ashamed of it. My ?
grandmother's English was horrible. Uh, my mother became an English ?
teacher because of that. Really??

Ken Bacon (00:10:17) - Yeah. Because, uh, in fact, my mother and her ?
sisters all, uh, two of her sisters, three of 'em were teachers. One was ?
a nurse. Uh, her brother became a pharmacist. But, um, and I'd say one ?
thing that, that that's true in my dad's family, well, for my dad, my ?
mother's family and my wife's family was education, education, education. ?
Um, that, that was, that was just paramount. Cuz that was the only escape ?
from, from the poverty. Sure. Uh, and, um, but like I say, it influenced ?
me because even, even when I wasn't at my grandmother's, just seeing the ?
difference between the churches, you know, uh, when I go to the, the mass ?
again, it was Latin. The Alta boys were still dressed in white. Uh, and ?
then I go to the Baptist Church with my dad. So just two different, ?
different styles. And, uh, people often ask me about race.?

Ken Bacon (00:11:19) - I knew two white people before the age of 11. The ?
priest and the Jewish sales lady in the department store that we used to ?
go to a lot. Those are the only whites I knew. Um, and race, uh, there ?
was one good thing about growing up in that segregated neighborhood. And ?
that was role models. Uh, my doctor, my school teachers, when I would go ?
to a football game, the quarterbacks were black, the cheerleaders were ?
black. So I grew up, uh, associating success, achievement with people who ?
look like me. And I think that was a huge leg up. I didn't realize that ?
till later. And, uh, even when I went to school, uh, the teachers, uh, ?
you know, in those days, the best and brightest in the black community, ?
you became, they used to say, teach, preach, or get in the street. So the ?
people who went to college, you either became a teacher, a lawyer, a ?
doctor.?

Ken Bacon (00:12:20) - Those are the only things. There was no business. ?
Uh, you couldn't be in business. You, you know, shoes shine shop, uh, to ?
get a mortgage, you wanna know how I got interested in the housing. There ?
were only like, ooh, were like three ways you could get a mortgage in ?
those days, but only two of 'em could scale. Sometimes some they might be ?
a credit union, but the real best ways to get a mortgage in those days, ?
there was one savings loan, black owned savings loan, standard savings ?
loan. Don't buy a gentleman named Mac Hannah. And then there was a, uh, ?
black guy, Dr. Robinson at the fh A Shield. That's the only way you could ?
get a mortgage. I mean, it was like magic to get a mortgage. And, um, uh, ?
uh, so, you know, there was a benefit. On the other hand, uh, you know, ?
the way, as a young person, I would see race, one of my father's friends, ?
a very successful surgeon, got beat up by the police cuz he sassed he got ?
stopped, he'd had a few drinks, and the policeman called him the N word, ?
and he told him to f off and they beat him.?

Ken Bacon (00:13:24) - Uh, uh, another time. How

John Coe (00:13:27) - Old were you the first time you knew that you were ?
a black man in America, per se? That that feeling that many of your,?

Ken Bacon (00:13:34) - I mean, I was aware of race. I can't print from, ?
you know, from the beginning. But the first time, it probably like around ?
six or seven, you started realizing like, here are the lions that, you ?
know, the cross. And my dad was very active, uh, in civil rights locally. ?
Mm-hmm. . So, in fact, someone sent me a picture a couple years ago when ?
my dad and some other doctors, some black students were, uh, protesting ?
at the local, one of the local colleges. And my dad and some other people ?
had to go bail them out. Um, like I said, they were the meetings. I mean, ?
even when, like, I remember one of the stuff about George Floyd, one of ?
the ministers who spoke to George Floyd was my dad's, uh, minister, uh, ?
when they had the funeral service. George Floyd grew up, uh, as a crow, ?
fly as probably mile and a half or two miles from, really, one thing ?
about segregation, another thing about segregation.?

Ken Bacon (00:14:33) - Look, I had a middle class upbringing, but I went ?
to school with, uh, you know, I mean, I, I could tell you people I went ?
to school with whose dads were preachers, doctors, lawyers. I also went ?
to school with people who didn't have food. Um, I grew up, uh, the ?
neighborhoods I lived in were kind of middle class, but you were never ?
far away from poverty. You're never far away. Uh, one example I like to ?
tell is that after, when I became an investment banker back in the 1980s, ?
uh, my boss and I were going to Houston looking at some bond deal. And I ?
forgot why. We went, went through kind of edge of my old neighborhood, ?
and we stopped to get gas. And a guy comes up and sees me, Kenny, how you ?
doing man? And, you know, we are speaking and kicking it.?

Ken Bacon (00:15:29) - And when he walks away, the, uh, , my boss said, ?
oh, Ken, uh, uh, who was it? I said, it was a guy I went to elementary ?
school with. He said, oh, uh, he owns this gas station. I laugh. I said, ?
no, man, he doesn't own, he's just pumping gas. You know. So I went to ?
school with look, sure, one guy. Uh, look, there, there's some people I ?
went to kindergarten with, uh, one of whom went to Princeton, Columbia ?
Law School, became a very famous news anchor in Houston. Uh, another ?
friend, uh, Tony, who went to Harvard College, uh, jd, N B a at Harvard ?
now is in the richest neighborhood in Houston, uh, hosted Barack Obama ?
when he was running. And he's on the boards of several companies. I mean, ?
I, I could go on and on about successful ones, but, uh, I can also tell ?
you, uh, about the people who didn't make it.?

Ken Bacon (00:16:20) - Uh, one of the funniest things that happened to ?
Fannie Mae once is that said, not long after I joined Fannie Ma I had a ?
secretary who could, uh, take vacation. So I called in one day, I said, I ?
want to do this letter. I said, she said, sir, I said, this letters to ?
the honorable judge, so and so, such and such district court, state of ?
Texas said, dear Judge, I'm writing you on behalf of John Doe. Known John ?
for over 40 years. We went to nursery school together, and blah, blah, ?
blah, blah, blah. And I want to tell you that he's not a drug dealer, per ?
se. And my secretary looked up at me like, what the, you know, but as a ?
guy I grew up with who got busted for possession of cocaine. Uh, so ?
again, I've had friends in the boardroom. I've had friends in jail.?

Ken Bacon (00:17:09) - Uh, in fact, one time I had to tell my wife when ?
I, uh, again, when I was in Fannie Mae, I said, look, uh, so-and-so's ?
gonna come in town. Are you comfortable with him staying here? She said, ?
why? I said, well, you should know that he spent time in jail for ?
manslaughter. And my wife looked at me, I said, I can explain. It was not ?
like a random act. Uh, it was an argument that got out of hand. And, uh, ?
he did his time. And my, after I explained, my wife said, okay. And I ?
can't tell you how grateful he was cuz he said, I really thought you had ?
turned your back on me. I said, Hey, I know your mama. I know your daddy. ?
You know, we, we grew up together. I said, I know you're not you, you got ?
in the bad situation. So I tell you that to say that when I say I had a ?
great childhood, one of the things that made it great was, like I said, I ?
knew the high. I knew the hello.?

John Coe (00:18:02) - Fascinating. Gave

Ken Bacon (00:18:03) - You, gave you a long answer to this.?

John Coe (00:18:04) - Well, that's, that's what I want to hear. Mm-hmm. , ?
I mean, this is great. Um mm-hmm. . So what's, I mean, your parents, ?
obviously education was huge. Mm-hmm. . So that embedded in your soul, I ?
assume mm-hmm. . Yes. So you obviously studied hard. You worked hard in ?
school.?

Ken Bacon (00:18:19) - Yeah. You know, it is funny. Not really. Um, that ?
was partly due to a couple of things. One, my brother was, uh, kind of ?
legendary. My brother got skip grades. Uh,?

John Coe (00:18:37) - He had your father's intelligence then.?

Ken Bacon (00:18:39) - Yeah. And my brother, uh, when he got, was in high ?
school, schools were still segregated. And my father, again, I told you ?
he was active in civil rights. He did not want us to go to segregated ?
schools ever. So my brother left Houston, uh, after the 10th grade, and ?
he went to Lake Forest Academy and he went to Lake Forest. Really? Uh, ?
yeah. There were people trying to get 'em to go to Exeter and over the ?
boarding schools were opening up. But because we had family, and there ?
were a few black families who had small businesses that my dad had gone ?
to school with who lived in Lake Forest. So my brother went to Lake ?
Forest Academy. He integrated Lake Forest. He was the first black ?
student. The only black student he graduated is valedictorian.?

John Coe (00:19:23) - Oh my goodness.?

Ken Bacon (00:19:24) - And he's the one who started the family thinking ?
about going to Stanford. I think it is partly his reaction. I probably ?
didn't apply myself as hard in school as my, my brother did. People ?
compared me with him. So I was a good student, you know, I made A's, but ?
I made a few B's. I wasn't straight ass. Um, but I was always very ?
intellectual. I mean, I loved, I used to read National Geographic. I used ?
to read American Heritage. I used to read all these magazines. And my ?
dad, uh, would sit up. Uh, and when my dad would come in, he was a ?
physician and surgeon, a lot of times he would be in late. But a lot of ?
times he would sit up. I can still see him sitting in the den playing ?
music. Uh, he was either drinking, uh, bourbon and Coke or, uh, Jack ?
Daniels, you know, with water smoking a cigarette. Tylers. And he would ?
talk, it might be about a civil rights issue. It, I mean, I never took a ?
black history course. I didn't have to. My dad would sit up and tell me, ?
he'd talk about everything from, uh, black Kings in Africa to w B Dubois. ?
Uh, he would talk about, he would put on spirituals and tell me the ?
history of that. Frederick

John Coe (00:20:45) - Douglass.?

Ken Bacon (00:20:45) - Uh, yeah, I knew all that. Uh, uh, even when he ?
would play jazz, I mean, uh, and, uh, count

John Coe (00:20:54) - Basey, duke Ellington.?

Ken Bacon (00:20:55) - No, it's funny you mentioned Count Bassy. My dad ?
knew a lot of musicians. Mm-hmm. . And my mother was a great hook. So I ?
grew up, I mean, count Basey when he was in town would come by our house. ?
Really? Yeah. My mother's gumbo loved

John Coe (00:21:12) - His music.?

Ken Bacon (00:21:13) - , my mother's gumbo. Uh, and cooking thing was ?
legendary. So Count Bassy, Sam Cook. Oh, Bobby, blue Bland. Wow. Uh, one ?
governor, mayors, a lot of people came by our house to eat. Uh, and, uh,?

John Coe (00:21:31) - Dr. King??

Ken Bacon (00:21:33) - No, not Dr. King. I met Dr. King's daughter. Uh, ?
but Barbara Jordan, uh, when she ran, my dad was her campaign manager ?
when she ran for state representative in the first congressional ?
election. In fact, funny story, I worked for Barbara Jordan, uh, after my ?
freshman year in college. And the other day I was at the Cosmos Club for, ?
uh, some function and a woman who heard my name and came up to somebody ?
that worked for Barbara Jordan's office 50 years ago. Wow. Uh, uh, she, ?
in fact, she's invited me to speak to an affordable housing thing in ?
Montgomery County in a few weeks.?

John Coe (00:22:06) - Isn't that something??

Ken Bacon (00:22:07) - So that's what I meant about when I grew up, about ?
the role models. I mean, if you go look at the history of, uh, ?
integration of Texas, the first black graduates of the University of ?
Texas Dental School, the University of Texas Law School, these people ?
lived in my neighborhood. Uh, the actress, Felicia Rashad and Debbie ?
Allen. Oh, sure. Yeah. They were, I, I, you know, they lived in my ?
neighborhood. Their parents were friends with my parents. In fact, my ?
brother just had, uh, breakfast with Debbie Allen the other day. He was ?
in la um, uh, Beyonce, uh, grew up, uh, on the street where my aunt ?
lived. She went to school with, uh, uh, my nieces . Uh, so, but that was ?
the nature of the community. You know, I'm not native. I believe it's ?
just that, like we, you knew everybody. You know, you knew everybody.?

Ken Bacon (00:22:54) - That's great. So, uh, uh, so yeah, that's, I, so ?
I, I, I, what made me apply myself in school is when I got ready to go to ?
high school, the schools in Houston were integrated. So I didn't think ?
I'd have to leave. But my parents said, you know, if you go to the public ?
high school, your education won't be as good as your brothers. So they ?
wanted me to go to the Catholic, a Catholic boy school, straight Jesuit. ?
Well, my brother was very Catholic. I was not, and I did not relish the ?
idea of going to school with a bunch of priests and not  not for any ?
moral reason. But, you know, I just, I just, you

John Coe (00:23:34) - Didn't want rulers on your hand when you're doing ?
bad. I just, I just didn't

Ken Bacon (00:23:37) - Want the, the Catholic, because I, I got in ?
trouble as a young kid. Yeah. Cause, uh, when the priests would try to ?
teach me stuff, I'd always counter with something I heard from my dad's ?
minister. So, uh, my grandfather in Illinois died at that time. My ?
grandmother was having a very hard time adjusting. So I volunteered. I ?
said, you know, I'll go to Illinois. I'll go live with grandma. And at ?
that time, uh, my grandmother lived in Evanston and Evanston, uh, ?
Winnetka, those suburbs had the best public high schools in the country. ?
So I went to Evanson Township High School. And that was probably the ?
most, I'd say that was the real, the real racial awakening for me, the ?
real racial awake for me. Because in the South, if somebody didn't like ?
you, you knew it very quickly. You know, if you weren't welcome, you knew ?
it. And the worst incidents of racism I experienced were really in ?
Illinois.?

John Coe (00:24:38) - Doesn't surprise me. I grew up in Detroit. Yeah.?

Ken Bacon (00:24:40) - Yeah.?

John Coe (00:24:41) - I lived, I grew up in Gross Point, Michigan. Yeah. ?
If you know the Detroit area. Yeah. There's a, there's a road called Al ?
Alter Road. Yeah. You go across that road. Yeah. It's literally black and ?
white. Yeah. Literally.?

Ken Bacon (00:24:54) - So, so it happened like that to Illinois. I got ?
placed in honors classes. Yeah. So the first rude of waiting was that a ?
lot of the black students there were, uh, chilly towards me at first. ?
Cause, and I didn't understand that. And what I discovered is that ?
Evanston was the home of Northwestern University. Of

John Coe (00:25:13) - Course.?

Ken Bacon (00:25:14) - So they were professors' kids. They had a heavy ?
Jewish population. And a lot of the black kids starting elementary school ?
could not compete with their white peoples. Not do their lack of native ?
intelligence, but it was, you know, they weren't going to summer school. ?
It was kind of a working class, black community,?

John Coe (00:25:33) - Structural racism. Yeah.?

Ken Bacon (00:25:35) - So all of a sudden, I'm taking these honors, they ?
see me taking these honors classes mm-hmm. , where I was often the only ?
black student of one of two or three. So they assume, oh, you know, you ?
must not be with us. That was shop number one, uh, shop number two, I'm ?
in these classes, I'm getting A's, and I used to hang out in the library. ?
And again, like I said, I wasn't like, I wasn't a library to study. I ?
just like to read. So I started reading once about India, and I got into ?
reading about Hinduism. And one of the teachers saw me one time getting ?
this book. And he said, whoa, what are you reading? I said, this book on ?
Hinduism. And we started talking, well, this particular teacher was in ?
charge of social studies mm-hmm. . And he had studied, uh, uh, uh, India ?
when he had, was a grad student at University of Chicago.?

Ken Bacon (00:26:27) - So I did independent study with him. And one day ?
he said, you know, have you thought about taking one of the advanced ?
placement courses? I said, no. So I applied to take European history mm-?
hmm.  Advanced Placement. Mm-hmm. . And it created a furor at the school ?
because some of the other teachers in social studies felt that he ignored ?
his standards to let me in. And I had two, not one, but two teachers ?
whose classes I had aced who told me, oh, they're just letting you in ?
because you're black. You don't write well enough. And I'd say, well, I ?
got an A in your class. How can you say it? I was devastated. I was ?
devastated. My grandmother was ready to go down there and  whoop ass. And ?
I went to Mr. Sharp and I said, Mr. Sharp. Uh, and I didn't even want to ?
tell my parents and used to what was going on.?

Ken Bacon (00:27:21) - I was ashamed. Uh, I didn't know how to, I, I had ?
never experienced anything like that. Because when, when they integrated ?
schools in Texas, you know, like I said, you could tell when a teacher ?
didn't like you, you could tell. Right. And you could deal with it. So ?
here I was, I was taking honors classes. Again, I, I, I had like a, you ?
know, probably an A minus B plus average. But to have teachers where I ?
got an A in the class, tell me that you're not good enough for this. And ?
this man, Mr. Sharp said, well, I think you're good enough. He says, ?
you're writing could improve, but I'm not worried about that. So yes, you ?
should stay. And, uh, and then the test scores came out. I, you know, ?
we'd take the National Merit and everything, and I did extremely well. ?
And the counselors and everybody, when I went to talk to them, they said, ?
well, what would you, where do you want to go to school??

Ken Bacon (00:28:17) - I said, well, my brother's at Stanford. I wanna go ?
to Stanford or Northwestern. I want to be in a, you know, look, you're ?
?17. I said, I want to be in the, it was a pack eight, then I wanna be in ?
the pack eight of the Big 10. And, uh, they said, well, Ken, uh, your ?
test scores are certainly good enough for your grades. I said, what do ?
you mean? Well, most people have an, uh, a perfect A or a plus. I said, ?
so that's what I gotta do. I said, okay. They said, well, Ken, you just ?
can't. I said, watch me, watch me. And um, so that's when I started ?
applying myself fully for the first time. You were

John Coe (00:28:52) - What, a junior at the time in high

Ken Bacon (00:28:53) - School? Yeah. Junior. And, uh, cuz you know, I ?
got, I took ap Yeah. History of my senior year. Yeah. In my junior year I ?
started, I turned on the Jets. Cause I used to leave school. I'd play ?
basketball after school, you know, just in the gym. I'd hang out, uh, go ?
home and listen to music. Did

John Coe (00:29:11) - You play, uh, any sports in high

Ken Bacon (00:29:13) - School? I wrestled, uh, in the 10th grade. Really? ?
Yeah. I wrestled, but then my knees got You're

John Coe (00:29:17) - A tall guy for wrestling.?

Ken Bacon (00:29:18) - Yeah. But that's what happened. I just, my, I just ?
gross spurt and my knees got bad, so I stopped. Yeah. And people said ?
about basketball, I said, you know, I played for a couple hours. The guys ?
who were good would play. They'd go home. They'd go play at night. Okay. ?
I wasn't that serious about it. And, um, but when my senior year, I would ?
go study, like you wouldn't believe. And not only was I studying, I was ?
helping all my friends. I was helping 'em with their essays for college. ?
I was helping them with their grades because when they called, they ?
called in all the black guys at my high school who had done well on the ?
National Merit test. There was six or seven of us. One guy who ended up ?
going to Cornell I knew was kind of a nerd, nerdy, uh, another guy was a ?
football player, uh, who I later found out, I didn't know it.?

Ken Bacon (00:30:12) - His father had competed against track against my ?
dad in high school. But I didn't know it at the time. But there were ?
another, there was one guy who was a borderline hoodle. Right. And I was ?
stunned. I mean, I knew he was bright. I didn't know he was that good. ?
And they had no idea about college. And, and that's what I mean about ?
the, the, the class thing, about the exposure. And, um, so I get into ?
this European history course, and, uh, you know, these were, I mean, this ?
was a school of about three or 4,000 people all together, the high ?
school. So this was the best and the brightest. And I got the second ?
highest. There were two sections of European history. So all together it ?
probably taking 40 people. I got the second highest score. I also took ?
the AP test in English on a dare and scored higher on that.?

Ken Bacon (00:31:04) - Um, and I say that, that's, I was, I was, when ?
people told me I couldn't do something, I got pissed. You know, I, I went ?
from sadness to anger. Um, and I will never forget the teacher who, the ?
teachers who backed me. And ironically, that same teacher got in trouble ?
years later because there was a rebellion. Some black parents felt that ?
there was too much resources going into the advanced placement courses. ?
And he stood up to defend it. And, uh, he was a very principled man. And ?
it really hurt me. I found out later he got labeled as elitist and he ?
ended up quitting. And, uh, but I used to, every time I'd go back to ?
visit my grandmother, I used to go by and see him. Mm-hmm. . Um, but, uh, ?
yeah, he was alist. But you know, I always tell people that there's, one ?
of the things that happens in this country is that, uh, uh, we associate ?
elitism with class and with race too often, as opposed to, and, um, but ?
he believed in me. And so when I got to Stanford, that's, like I say, my ?
attitude had changed. So that's, that, that was a spark. So I'm one of ?
those people. And I always tell people that I don't know if I would been ?
able to get to Stanford today, because now these kids, you know, people ?
now, why are you looking at my kids? You know, people start, you gotta ?
start shining so early. I was a late bloomer. I was a very late bloomer.?

John Coe (00:32:40) - Well, you're also a black man. Mm-hmm. . And at ?
that time, and this is, you're about the same age as I am. So you ?
graduated high school about 1972 or so. That's right. That's right. ?
There's, you know, that era, I mean, if you were bright and black, you're ?
gonna get into college. And I mean, they were looking for that at that ?
point. Cuz the civil rights laws and all the affirmative action and all ?
those things going on, at that point, you were, you know, if you did ?
really well, if you did better than mm-hmm. , let's say 1400 in the SATs, ?
you, you're gonna get into a really good school. Mm-hmm. , you could have ?
gone the Ivy League, you could probably gone anywhere you wanted to, I ?
imagine.?

Ken Bacon (00:33:13) - Yeah. But I wanted, like I say, I wanted to be ade ?
a big 10. Right. Um, and because I, I once went to a Northwestern Ohio ?
State game and I just loved it. And I went to a summer school program for ?
my junior year at the University of Michigan. So I knew I was gonna apply ?
to San,?

John Coe (00:33:29) - That's my alma mater.?

Ken Bacon (00:33:30) - Oh, you went Michigan? Yes, I did. Well, what ?
happened? Uh, it was gonna either be Michigan or Northwestern Uhhuh . ?
And, uh, I decided on Northwestern. Um, but one of my brother-in-laws ?
went to Michigan Law School. I have a niece at Michigan Law School now ?
mm-hmm. . Uh, so, uh, so that, that, that turned out. So I still jokingly ?
say I've still got ties to go blue. Yes. Um, but, uh, no, that's, that's, ?
that's how it all came about.?

John Coe (00:33:57) - Yeah. And then why Stanford? And cuz your brother, ?
I assume, was he there at the time when you went to school? Yeah.?

Ken Bacon (00:34:01) - Was there? Well, he, he had actually left, uh, he ?
had grad, he graduated in 70. But what happened when I was about 14, I ?
went to visit my brother. Yeah. And I still remember I drove up Palm ?
Drive, born in Stanford campus.?

John Coe (00:34:16) - Got it.?

Ken Bacon (00:34:16) - And when I saw the church in the Foothills, I ?
thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It's

John Coe (00:34:22) - Incredible

Ken Bacon (00:34:22) - Place. And I fell in love with it then. And I, I ?
tell people that I still, it still takes my breath away today when I go ?
visit. Um, and so I just fell in love with the place. And the other thing ?
that happened, my brother, I was, I, I, you know, I said, okay, I'm gonna ?
apply to Stanford. I don't know if I'm getting, I'm gonna apply to ?
Berkeley. I'm gonna apply to ucla. My brother would not let me apply to ?
Berkeley  because he said, you know, he said, oh, it's, it's, it's too ?
crazy. You can't go there. And I can't remember how he taught me out ?
ucla, but I discovered later the reason he didn't want me, if, if I had ?
visited ucla, uh, again, you're 17 and you go look at the ladies, I think ?
I would've gone to Westwood. I would've, I would've been there .?

Ken Bacon (00:35:07) - So, uh, and, and my brother again, uh, was ?
extremely confident. He said, you're gonna get in San. I said, I don't, ?
you're gonna get in. Um, and, uh, you know, ID, I'd say a very important ?
thing I'd say anybody's life is you want people to push it, but you need ?
people to have confidence. And if my father was the intellectual engine ?
in my family, my mother was what I call the guts and toughness. And so ?
growing up, my father would've been happy. You know, he used to talk ?
about Howard and Morehouse. Of course. He was not, uh, enamored of ?
necessarily the major white universities. He never, ever, ever pressed ?
that on me or his grandchildren. He was kind of what I call a race man. ?
And I think it was just the era he grew up in and what he experienced. So ?
he believed in the black colleges.?

Ken Bacon (00:36:06) - My mother, on the other hand, who had just gone to ?
the local little black college there in Houston, uh, I grew up my mother ?
talking about the Ivy Leagues and the University of Texas opened up mm-?
hmm. , she made it very clear in that my, my mother, when we did her ?
funeral, we had a picture of her. And we had one of her quotes where she ?
said, I am the first lady. Now the full quote was that people knew her. ?
She used to say, I'm the first lady. And, and she laughed. She said, that ?
other broad just happens to live in a White House, . And she'd laugh. ?
Right. But my, my mother always made it a point, like even when she would ?
cook, you know, she eat steaks. She says, you know what? The president ?
steaks your steaks as good as anything. The presidency, , you know, she, ?
she made it a point to always push for the best.?

Ken Bacon (00:36:56) - Mm-hmm. , you're gonna do the best. My dad had a ?
different definition. So my mother, my mother's thing, even when my ?
brother was like, went to Stanford, my mother really didn't know a lot ?
about Stanford. Like, was like, why didn't you go to Harvard, Columbia ?
when my brother didn't want that. His school wanted him to, like I say, ?
he was a valedictorian. They wanted him to do that. But, uh, uh, and I ?
still remember when we went to grad my brother again, another thing, my ?
family was very low. He, we didn't even know he was valedictorian until ?
we walked in the graduation. Ceremonial opened up the program. And I ?
remember that my, my grandfather, you know, again, he was a chauffeur. I ?
thought he was gonna kill over with pride. And my mother, everybody was ?
just blown away. And, you know, uh, and so that's, my mother was like, ?
why not the best that, that's how my mother was.?

John Coe (00:37:51) - She's, that's great.?

Ken Bacon (00:37:52) - She's a tough lady. That's

John Coe (00:37:53) - Great. So you obviously did well enough in Stanford ?
mm-hmm.  to get a Marshall Scholarship. Talk about that process and what, ?
what that is. Well, what

Ken Bacon (00:38:03) - Happened? Uh, I got to Stanford. Uh, I got very ?
involved with student politics. Uh, I took an anthropology course on ?
cultures, recent culture in the West Indies. And most of the people in ?
the class, there were a lot of West Indian grad students. And I got in ?
that class. I loved it. I read everything. And I was the best student in ?
the class. So the word got out among a lot of the grad students. And so, ?
and I loved my subject area anthropology. So I took all these courses on ?
Africa, the West Indies. Uh, did you ever

John Coe (00:38:41) - Meet Margaret Maid??

Ken Bacon (00:38:42) - No. No. I, I, I didn't go to that direction. I was ?
more like cultures. I was just, and again, I think it was a reflection of ?
the, where I grew up about, you know, I always believe that your race, ?
your religion, your class, your geography, your language, all these ?
things shaped your worldview. And, um, so, you know, that's, that's what ?
I did at Stanford. And, and, uh, I got involved in the student Senate. I ?
was protesting stuff. But, uh, again, I went through a thing. I was ?
reasonably serious. But again, my junior year, I just got deep. I mean, I ?
became a, uh, in fact, I, I got so good that I remember I was even a ?
teaching assistant as an undergrad for the course of my senior year. I ?
got a research grant to go to the West Indies after my junior year. So I ?
went to, uh, Trinidad and Guyana, and I stopped in Jamaica and Antivia.?

Ken Bacon (00:39:41) - But I spent about a month in this country, Guyana, ?
uh, going through archives of, uh, from the 17 or 18 hundreds, uh, uh, ?
looking up stuff. So, uh, what happened when I came back from, after my ?
junior year, and I told one of my professors, I said, boy, I wish I could ?
go overseas and study. And they said, what do you wanna study? I said, ?
well, you know, I'm really fascinated about how economic economic ?
development in class. And, you know, I talked about the differences in ?
slavery and what happened after slavery in West Indies and the us. So ?
someone suggested, well, why don't you apply for Rhode and Marshals ?
scholarships? And, um, and, uh, the process for both of those ?
scholarships is pretty, it's an argument process because you have to get ?
recommendations from a lot of professors. But because I had been so deep ?
in my subject area, I had recommendations from professors in ?
anthropology, sociology, psychology, uh, literature. Um, I, uh, got to ?
know, in fact, one of the professors I, I knew well was, uh, got a little ?
fame now was Colin Harris' dad. Donald, uh, Harris, who I didn't know ?
until maybe a decade ago that there was about who his daughter was. I ?
didn't know. Uh, but Donald was a professor of economics. And, uh, um, so ?
that's what, you know, that's what got me interested. I wanted to go ?
overseas and study. I wanted to study economics. And, uh, um,?

John Coe (00:41:22) - Were you thinking academically to stay in the ?
academic environment at that point? You wanted be a professor??

Ken Bacon (00:41:28) - I was kind of left wing. I wanted to be in ?
academia. I had been on the search committee for professors. I had been a ?
teaching assistant. And by this time another thing that had happened, my ?
father had become a, a professor at Baylor Medical School. Ah, he should ?
have, that's what if he weren't for segregation, he should have been ?
there from the beginning

John Coe (00:41:47) - Teaching.?

Ken Bacon (00:41:47) - Yeah. He was like, he ended up becoming a ?
professor and associate dean at Baylor. And my mother was a school ?
teacher, had an aunt who was a school teacher. Mm-hmm. . So, you know, ?
uh, and my parents had friends who were professors. Uh, my brother's ?
first wife got her PhD in Berkeley. Her, uh, aunt and uncle were ?
professors. So I was around a lot of people in AC academia. And so, but ?
what got me interested in business, ironically, was going to England. It ?
wasn't anything in the US because I didn't, I wasn't around a business ?
person, you know. So what was

John Coe (00:42:23) - Your first reaction when you arrived in London? ?
London School of Economics? What

Ken Bacon (00:42:27) - Was that? Well, my first reaction, okay, I go to ?
England in the seventies. This is when, before Margaret Thatcher mm-hmm. ?
?. So the first thing is you become aware of in England, in the class ?
disparities. Yeah. Stark. And, you know, it's one thing in the US when ?
you talk about, uh, left wing, about board government involvement. And I ?
got over there and like having to deal with the National Health Service. ?
Mm-hmm. , no, you didn't still walk into a doctor's office. You had to ?
wait. And, uh, I saw the strikes going on. Yeah. But I'd say the two most ?
significant things that got me interested in business is that I was in a ?
dormitory where all the students were from former British colonies. Mm-?
hmm. , uh, Bahamas, Jamaica, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Canada, ?
Australia. So I'm hanging around all these African and West Indian ?
students, and they were all studying law.?

Ken Bacon (00:43:28) - They were studying business. And I remember I ?
wanted to ask one of my Nigerian friends, I said, he was working for an ?
accounting firm. I says, oh, oh, yeah, he was gonna go work for Royal ?
Dutch Shell. I says, but aren't these people starting your company? He ?
says, Ken, I'm working for the oil company. Says, he says, I want to run ?
an oil company. And I told somebody, I said, you know, I heard all this ?
stuff about Revolution and Marxism. I said, I haven't met an African ?
Marxist yet. . Right. I said, and so what I realized,  in, in somebody ?
who's a socialist who get mad, I said, you know, this is all a bunch of ?
bs. Right. And I even met somebody from China in one of my classes. This ?
one, they was still wearing mile suits. And I remember asking this woman, ?
I, I, I was, I said, I walked, why are you here in London School of ?
Economic??

Ken Bacon (00:44:22) - And she said, Ken, internationally, we are all ?
capitalists. So I got interested in business, and it so happened that one ?
of the Marshall Scholars was, uh, the son of the head of a smaller oil ?
company. So he had an apartment in Kensington, and he was Southern. And ?
one time after one party, we are drinking bourbon, smoking cigars. And I ?
said, Charlie, man, how's it going? He said, what are you doing? He says, ?
well, Ken, I got myself a part-time job at, uh, Lehman Brothers. And I ?
said, what's that? He said, it's an investment bank. I said, what's that? ?
He said, it's like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. I said, who are ?
they? So he started talking to me about that. And then another Marshall ?
Scholar's dad worked for, uh, a bank in Texas that had a London office ?
mm-hmm. , where I set up a checking account mm-hmm.?

Ken Bacon (00:45:17) - . And when I went there one time, we would get ?
stipends and it was in pounds. They said, well, sir, do you want this in ?
pounds of dollars? And I said, well, what do you mean? And he says, well, ?
the foreign exchange rate is very favorable right now if you want to ?
convert to dollars. So I started, when I get money from home, I started ?
paying attention to like the trade, the trade rate. Yeah. So that's how I ?
got interested in business. So I, I told someone being in a country that ?
still had socialist tendencies. Yeah. And I love London. Uh, most of the ?
Marshall Scholars were at Oxford, Cambridge. I was one of the few in ?
London. I was doing economics, and the Marshall Scholarship was sponsored ?
by the foreign office. So the foreign office would invite me to events. ?
And one time I went to an event, uh, uh, where I was the only student, ?
uh, and it was about recycling the oil dollars.?

Ken Bacon (00:46:14) - This is 19 76, 77. And there was people from Saudi ?
Arabia, Kuwait, uh, JP Morgan, I mean all these big people. Mm-hmm. . And ?
I met the treasurer of Royal, be Shell, who invited me to go to lunch ?
with him. And so by my second year at the lsc, he once said, why don't ?
you come talk to us if you'd like to get a job out? And I was all said, I ?
had a girlfriend in London, but what happened when I looked at what they ?
would pay me, and I looked at the taxes, I, I was horrified because I ?
realized that I wouldn't be any better off than I was as a student after ?
I'd have to pay rent. And I said, to hell with this. So I'm going back ?
home. Mm-hmm. . So that's what got me interested in business. And I still ?
thought about academia, but I I I, I looked at business very differently ?
because they got rid of my ignorance and hostility about business and, ?
uh, uh, made me aware of the potential of business.?

John Coe (00:47:20) - Had you gone to Oxford at Cambridge, you'd probably ?
be a PhD professor somewhere right now then, do you think??

Ken Bacon (00:47:26) - Yeah, because, uh, I wouldn't have been as ?
exposed, like I said, in London. Uh, and, you know, uh, right now, if ?
you, in The Bahamas, one of the people I know is the head of the ?
Bahamians, uh, uh, Supreme Court, another Bahamian I know became like ?
minister. You know, they became ministers and Jamaica all over. These, ?
all these people did, became big lawyers, became ministers in government. ?
Some of them made a heck of a lot of money. Uh, but I think one of the ?
things about segregation, you associated business and a lot of wealth ?
with race. Right. Cause there was nobody who looked like me who did that. ?
Well, all of a sudden I see the Africans, you know, and Nigerians all ?
about the money. Right? So all of a sudden I saw in London, people with ?
extraordinary wealth. Again, culturally they were different from me. ?
Yeah. But they looked like me. Yeah. In other words, race was not an ?
issue in terms of their ambition, in terms of what they could do. And so ?
that kind of stripped that away,?

John Coe (00:48:30) - Changed your whole orientation then. Yeah.?

Ken Bacon (00:48:33) - Yeah. And that was the real benefit of that.?

John Coe (00:48:36) - So then you came back and you went to Harvard ?
Business School. So what, you know, obviously that stimulated that ?
interest out. Well,?

Ken Bacon (00:48:42) - What happened? I got back to Houston. I, uh, uh, ?
shaved my beard off, cut my hair, . I still remember, uh, my dad's ?
minister, Reverend Lawson. I wanted to work. I applied for some banks. ?
None of the banks would hire me in Houston at that time. There was still ?
a lot of big independent banks. And Reverend Lawson's wife said, why ?
don't you go to ibm? Some of our members were on ibm. I remember I went ?
to IBM and the, the manager of the, uh, uh, of the office said, I wa I ?
walked in my coat and tie. And he said, well, you know, we wear white ?
shirts here. And when he said it, I went home and I joked and told my ?
mama, I said, well, I don't know whether he meant white shirts or white ?
skin, but I could wear a white shirt. So , I bought out, bought a bunch ?
of white shirts. Uh, I went to ibm. I was a salesman. That was a hard ?
job.?

John Coe (00:49:37) - Mainframe.?

Ken Bacon (00:49:38) - Uh, the, this was a, the small computers, what ?
they called it then, they weren't PCs. Right. These were small

John Coe (00:49:44) - Computer microcomputer or Mac, what do they call ?
?'em? Mini, mini computers. Yeah. Yeah.?

Ken Bacon (00:49:48) - Yeah. And, um, and my territory, I had to go call ?
on the most redneck people in the world, , , because my, my, my beat was, ?
uh, selling the oil field supply companies. Oh yeah. So I'd go to these ?
places. There'd be machinery and plants. And, you know, some of these ?
guys, you know, they had gone to Texas a and m and maybe they hadn't gone ?
to even college. And I had to deal with it. But, uh, I dealt with it. Uh, ?
and it was great because I got exposed to business at a very basic level. ?
And so the only question for me was, was I gonna do an MBA or JD mba? A ?
And I had done enough of, uh, uh, school. I didn't want to do a JD m b, ?
so I said, I'm gonna go for mba. It was between Stanford and Harvard. And ?
I went to Harvard. Cause I said, you know, I know the Midwest. I know ?
Texas, I know California, I know London. I said, I've never spent time in ?
New York or Boston. So, uh, as one of the guys at IBM said, yeah, Kenny, ?
you need to go to learn about them. Yankees, . So, uh, that, that's what ?
I did. That's what I did. That's, that's how I ended up going there.?

John Coe (00:51:00) - How was your experience at Harvard Business School??

Ken Bacon (00:51:03) - It was, it was great in the relationships. I mean, ?
in the time I went there, I mean, Jamie Diamond was in my class. Really? ?
Uh, yeah. Jeff Inel later went to to Jeff Electric. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, ?
but, uh, I formed some lifelong friendships there because of the way, you ?
know, at Harvard, you sit your first year in a classroom and the ?
professors come to you. So you sit in the same 60 or 70 people. And it ?
was much more intense in those days than it was like when my daughter ?
went , uh, a few years ago. Uh, so, uh, that was good. I'd say the ?
difference though was that, um, unlike, uh, Stanford or, or lsc, your ?
relationships with your professors were very different. It was a more ?
formal, more distant, more business-like relationship. So when I left, I ?
started, I took Michael Porter's course, the strategy, and I tore the ?
class up.?

Ken Bacon (00:52:05) - I was the best thing in the class. Uh, partly ?
because I took a graduate economics course at Harvard. And so I figured ?
out what he was doing in his class. Mm-hmm. . Cause I took from one of ?
his, uh, PhD advisors. So I knew what he was doing. So every time he ?
presents something in class, I knew the economic theory. I knew the study ?
cuz I was still taught was going to academics. I thought about doing a ?
PhD in business economics. And the only reason I didn't do it is when I ?
took the graduate course in economics at Harvard, the students there ?
discouraged me. They said, you wanna do economic school? Mit, unless one ?
of these professors adopts you, it can be a very lonely it, it's not a ?
good experience. Hmm. So, um, that's, yeah. That, that was my experience ?
at business school. But it was the relationships with the people I formed ?
that, that those news was precious.?

John Coe (00:52:54) - So finance that intrigued you.?

Ken Bacon (00:52:57) - You know, I really like strategy, but what ?
happened, I worked at McKenzie one summer. I had a horrible experience. ?
Why? Uh, it was the first time the Texas office of McKenzie had hired ?
people. They just didn't know how to run an intern program. They didn't ?
make me an offer. But the New York office found out how they ran the ?
program and did make me an offer. And I just said to hell with it. And ?
that was kind of looking back, you know, wisdom is wasted on the old, ?
because two of my classmates said, Hey, we heard you can have a good ?
experience. Why don't you come work with us at Bain? Mm-hmm. . And I ?
said, man, I don't wanna do that consulting. Well, those two guys went to ?
Bain. They ended up working for mit, Roney and mm-hmm.  and started Bang ?
Capital. Yeah. Steve Pue couldn't Bo White.?

Ken Bacon (00:53:41) - So Steve Pue could just step down as co-head of ?
Bening Capital. Bob White stepped down a few years ago and those guys are ?
being fortunate. I always think like, oh, I can't believe you do that . ?
But, um, I got into finance, you know, uh, I applied for a lot of jobs. I ?
had office from an oil company. I had office from, uh, uh, I had office ?
from Proctor and Gamble, Arco Oil Time Warner. And I ended up in ?
investment banking by accident . I went to a reception one day the kid of ?
Peabody was having in public finance. Yeah. And I met this guy and I, I ?
did something. Oh, I did it the day. I'd be shocked. So I'm talking to ?
this guy cuz I, and I went there cuz you go to receptions cause they ?
always had great food. That's of course.?

Ken Bacon (00:54:27) - So I go there to get some shrimp and stuff and I'm ?
talking to this guy and I said, well man, you must not be working too ?
hard. He says, what do you mean? I said, well, you look like you got a ?
nice tan so you don't look like you've been working through the midnight. ?
Well, it turned out he was Cuban . His name was Mike Hernandez. So when I ?
said that, when I asked, I just saw Mike, he said, well, I'm Mike ?
Hernandez. I said, oh shit, . And we both laughed and I just really hit ?
it off with him. So he got back and said, would you like to talk to us? ?
And people said, public finance, why would you do it? But I never lost ?
what I call the liberal. My, my dad's do good thing. So, uh, I joined ?
Kitter Peabody in public finance and I had a boss, Jerry Sto, who I'm ?
still friends with today, and Jerry discovered I had a girlfriend in ?
Texas, that's my wife.?

Ken Bacon (00:55:17) - I married. And he said, you know, he had been in a ?
long distance relationship. And he said, you know what, uh, how are you ?
gonna see your girlfriend? I said, man, that's gonna be a problem, but ?
you know, I'll try to go down. He says, you know what, I'm gonna see if I ?
can get you on some accounts in Texas. And it was a little bit ?
controversial because everybody wondered like, can we send this black guy ?
down to deal with these people in Texas? And because of my experience at ?
ibm, I, I told him, I said, you know what, I'm gonna do better than you. ?
He said, what do you mean? Cause I said, I know how to talk to these ?
people. Y'all don't. And that's exactly what happened. Um, one lady who ?
was kind of, you know, uh, very, uh, you know, uh, back Bay, Boston, we ?
had a dinner for a county judge and some people from the Bond Authority ?
in Texas at the old Four Seasons restaurant in New York.?

Ken Bacon (00:56:12) - And she ordered Rack of Lamb. So when they served ?
the judge, she said, ma'am, this is lamb. She says, yes, they're famous ?
to the rack of lamb. He said, I'm a calendar. And she thought he was ?
kidding. And I said, judge, no problem. I said, waiter, . And I stepped ?
in and she, her mouth was open. She couldn't believe it. She said, uh, ?
uh, I thought that was only in Westerns. Uh, and I said, no, that's, I ?
said, uh, uh, that's real world. And, uh, so after that, she said, well, ?
you go deal with these people, . Uh, and uh, so I used to go to Texas ?
about every week I'd see my wife, um, and, you know, my girlfriend, I, ?
I'd fly to Houston. And, and so that's what kept our relationship going.?

John Coe (00:57:01) - That's great. That's great. So you, uh, joined ?
Kidder b Buddy. Yeah. At that point,?

Ken Bacon (00:57:09) - Doing taxes and housing.?

John Coe (00:57:11) - There you go. Um, so where'd the real estate bug ?
hit you??

Ken Bacon (00:57:16) - Okay. I'm doing taxes and bonds, uh, both for ?
first time home buyer, single family and multi-family. Okay. And did, you ?
know, got to know a lot of developers when securitization started. Kitter ?
had, uh, uh, some great traders, mortgage back traders, Steve Bomb, Tommy ?
Kendall, uh, Mike REOs, Mike REOs, later star, the hedge fund, Steve Baum ?
and Tommy Kendall, star of the fund. But they, they didn't have a banker, ?
you know, this was all new. So my, the head of public finance volunteered ?
me to be the banker. Right. I know anything about the scc, but I knew ?
about cash flows because we had to do structured credits in public ?
finance. Mm-hmm. . So I was the guy who would go up to the trading floor. ?
I do the SCC filings. Mm-hmm. , I did the capital commitment memo for the ?
firm. Mm-hmm. , I oversaw the cash flow analysis. So I learned, in other ?
words, I was operations administration for care, securitization efforts. ?
And it was a hard job. Cause the traders, I learned all the games of ?
traders were

John Coe (00:58:26) - Played in. Did you have the GSC exposure at that ?
point??

Ken Bacon (00:58:30) - Not really. I mean, well, the exposure I had was ?
dealing with, we started off doing Jenny MA's Zen. Right. Fannie and ?
Freddy. So, right. Hu Yeah. But, but then I dealt with Fannie and ?
Freddy's Securities. So I never dealt with Fannie and Freddy and I left ?
when GE took over, the culture changed. I should have stayed from an ?
economic perspective, but the culture changed. I just didn't like it. A ?
lot of rivalries. It became very political. So I went to Morgan Stanley ?
and at Morgan Stanley, they did securitization different, I was an ?
investment banker that covered savings and loans. Mm-hmm. . And that's ?
how we were bringing product. But I still sat on the trading floor.?

John Coe (00:59:07) - So this is late eighties. Yeah.?

Ken Bacon (00:59:09) - Late eighties, 1987. I was at Morgan Stanley when ?
the market went down. And, um, I covered these savings and loans. Uh, it ?
was great. But then in 89, I hadn't been there long savings loan started ?
going under mm-hmm. . And, uh, you know, I, the good thing is I got to do ?
a euro dollar deal. I got to do, uh, different structures. But savings ?
loan started going under a lawyer I knew in Texas went to work for the ?
Resolution Trust Corporation board, the board. And he used to call me to ?
get market advice. My business was disappearing at Morgan Stanley. I was ?
gonna have to make a move. And it so happened that the one professor at ?
Harvard that I was close to happened to come to town. And he asked me, we ?
went to lunch, he asked me how much money I was making.?

Ken Bacon (01:00:00) - I told him, he said, well, you know, bill Lewis, ?
who was a close friend of mine, the first Black MD in Morgan Stanley, m ?
and a, he said, well, you know, you know what Bill's making, he mentioned ?
Ray McGuire. He mentioned, uh, uh, uh, Zoe Cruz. He mentioned Gordy Rich. ?
I mean, he started mentioning all these people, Jamie. And I said, well, ?
they doing, they, they doing this. He said, you took classes with me and ?
you did as well, or better than him. Cause I did finish. I got second ?
year honors and argu. And I said, what's your point? He says, Ken, is ?
your heart really in investment banking, the people who do well, ?
investment banking, love money. Yeah. They come in here every day ready ?
to do that. Is that really you? And that started soul searching, and it ?
really wasn't me. And so I started looking for something outside of ?
banking.?

Ken Bacon (01:00:55) - And one of the senior people at Morgan Stanley who ?
liked me, could not believe that I was contemplating Leav . Because, you ?
know, at that time, Morgan Stanley and Goldman sat the pinnacle. Right, ?
right. But this guy I knew working for RTC one day, and he, he wasn't ?
trying to recruit me. Said, man, we could use somebody like you down ?
here. I said, well, why don't you make me an offer for a job? He says, ?
you can leave Morgan Stanley. I said, you love Vincent and Elkins, you ?
left your law firm. Mm-hmm. . So I went down to Washington. I took a job ?
as Director of policy for, for the oversight board. And the board at that ?
time was Allen Greenspan, Nick Brady, secretary of the Treasury, Jack ?
Kemp from, uh, a hud, uh, Bob Larson was the head of the Toman companies. ?
Oh, yeah. And another guy was retired Federal Reserve Governor.?

Ken Bacon (01:01:43) - And my wife and everybody, they, people, they ?
couldn't believe that I left Morgan Stanley. I took pay to say I took a ?
pay cut, would be an understatement. And I went down to Washington and, ?
uh, yeah. Ev every week I would go over the treasury to brief people, uh, ?
deputy secretary, um, uh, Bob Glover, John Robinson. And one time when we ?
realized that, that the pace of sales was too slow, that the, you know, ?
most of the RTC staff was from the F D I C, and they knew one way to do ?
things. So me and this lawyer said, we need to bundle these things and ?
sell groups. It was a huge, huge fight. The F D I C didn't want to do ?
that. Uh, there were people in Congress who didn't want to do that. And

John Coe (01:02:34) - You understood securitization. Yeah.?

Ken Bacon (01:02:36) - But no one had even securitized commercial ?
mortgages and non-performing stuff. But we felt, me and this guy, Michael ?
Youngman, felt that you could do this. And I remember one time I got into ?
a slight disagreement with Chairman Greenspan. I never will forget that. ?
And I was arguing and I said, you know, I don't think I'm gonna win this  ?
because Greenspan, you know how he mumbled in public, but he was not like ?
that in private. But, uh, but he is, he and Secretary Brady were the ?
unsung heroes because the bureaucracies were fighting. And I still ?
remember when there was a meeting when someone from the F D I C and ?
someone from the Senate Management Committee said, we'll put up a ?
proposal to securitize all these mortgages. And they said, and then we ?
said, everything non performed to do bulk sales. We came up with all ?
these structures and they said, you can't do this. Wall Street will make ?
a lot of money. And I remember Greenspan said, he says, yes, they'll make ?
a lot of money. And he says, at first they'll probably make above market ?
returns, but over time the markets will become efficient. And they said, ?
but they'll make money. And the Greenspan said, this is America. There's ?
nothing wrong with people making money. They make their money, they pay ?
their taxes. You know, government is not in the business of making money. ?
Government is not in the business of owning assets. The government ?
shouldn't do it.?

John Coe (01:04:04) - So did you ever meet Joe Robert JE Robert ?
Companies??

Ken Bacon (01:04:07) - Yes, I did. I met, in fact, if I told you ?
everybody, I met Ace Greenberg. I met Dick Fold, Michael ero, Lou Ranier. ?
I met every big Mortgage Trader.?

John Coe (01:04:18) - Give, give some perspective on who these gentlemen ?
were to this

Ken Bacon (01:04:21) - Listeners year. Well, you know, I controlled a lot ?
of business. I was the biggest game in town, and mortgages and, and, uh, ?
real estate. So everybody wanted to kiss my behind . Right. Uh, and, uh,?

John Coe (01:04:38) - Well, Dick, Dick Full tell, tell, say, explain who ?
he, he was. He

Ken Bacon (01:04:42) - Was president, even

John Coe (01:04:43) - Brothers. Right.?

Ken Bacon (01:04:44) - Uh, even though, I will tell you the most ?
impressive person I met was Ace Greenberg, the head of Bear Stearns.?

John Coe (01:04:49) - Right.?

Ken Bacon (01:04:50) - He was the most impressive, cuz he was the most ?
honest. He had a charisma that was undeniable. And Bear Stearns were ?
probably the best at under him. They were the

John Coe (01:05:01) - Bond. They were the bond kids. Yes.?

Ken Bacon (01:05:03) - And they were the best risk managers because, uh, ?
Goldman was good. But I, I sometimes I didn't fully trust Goldman because ?
there were a couple of times I found Goldman was not as transparent. .?

John Coe (01:05:17) - What about Solomon Brothers??

Ken Bacon (01:05:19) - Solly? Yeah. Solly had the, had, uh, great ?
traders. Goldman had a guy, Michael Montara, who I respected. Uh, first ?
of all, all the people came from had had done time on the .?

John Coe (01:05:33) - I mean, Louie was the kingpin, wasn't

Ken Bacon (01:05:34) - He? That's right. And all these guys. But there ?
were people like Wes Eatons who started Fortress.?

John Coe (01:05:39) - Fortress, right. Yeah.?

Ken Bacon (01:05:42) - Uh, and there were traders, people at startled ?
side like a guy, Jeff Crothall, who was a Merrill, who I had a lot of ?
respect for. Um, so I met all these people.?

John Coe (01:05:53) - John, good friend. I mean, John, good friend.?

Ken Bacon (01:05:56) - I never met John. Good friend. I can't remember, ?
oh, I'll tell you what happened with Sally. Cuz Sally got in trouble ?
while I was there. And that's when Warren Buffet came in and put in Bob. ?
He put in this guy a lawyer. And ironically, he put in a guy who, uh, a ?
British guy, I forgot his name, who I later met when I became a banker, ?
because he, a lot of guys I went to LSE with British guys, ended up ?
becoming investment bankers. Mm-hmm. . So I met all these people. Um,?

John Coe (01:06:28) - Michael Lewis, of course wrote about all this. ?
Yeah.?

Ken Bacon (01:06:31) - In Larry Poker. I was, it was the best job I ever ?
had. I managed people. It was fun. Yep. I was a big shot. Uh, but I knew ?
I was only a big shot. It wasn't me. It was the position I held. And when ?
I got through, I was ready to go back to Wall Street. I didn't get the ?
offers that I wanted to, but I thought I should have. Uh, they were com ?
commissioners of what I had done.?

John Coe (01:06:57) - So RTC basically, you know, collapsed pretty much. ?
Right. Well,?

Ken Bacon (01:07:02) - I left before it did. I, I, I knew enough. You ?
know, one advantage sometimes of, I, I'd say if race being a black man ?
came up when I did is, and something my mother used to always reinforce. ?
Cause I remember once when I was in Fannie Mae, my mother came up to see ?
me and she said, Kim, boy, you done good. She says, but don't you ever ?
believe that all these people around here are kissing your ass. That, ?
cause if you fell on the sidewalk, a lot of these people walk right by ?
you and spit on you. Don't you ever forget that? She said, the world ?
ain't changed that much that fast. And I was aware of that. In other ?
words, I knew that like, look, all these people are coming up to see me ?
kiss my behind the middle. I leave this, they're gonna be gone. And ?
that's what happened. Not everybody, there were some people who continued ?
to be, you know, uh, friends and cordial after I left. Mm-hmm. . But I ?
went to Fannie Mae because Fannie Mae offered, I could make money, but I ?
could do good. I could put people in housing. And so Fannie Mae offered ?
the best combination and I could manage. And that's what drove me into ?
Fannie Mae. So it was mission and money and, you know,?

John Coe (01:08:18) - Sounded like Mission meant more to you than money.?

Ken Bacon (01:08:21) - Yeah. I mean, look, you know, I never aspired to ?
great wealth. You know, I wanted to live an upper middle class lifestyle. ?
That that's what I wanted. You know, I wanted to be able to send my kids ?
to school. Uh, but yeah, you know, I, I didn't, I didn't dream about ?
yachts and private jets and all that type of thing. You know, that's, ?
that wasn't me.?

John Coe (01:08:46) - So what was your mission at Fannie? What did you ?
try to accomplish??

Ken Bacon (01:08:50) - Um, there were several things. Uh, one I truly ?
believed because of what I saw growing up. And Jim Johnson, God bless ?
him, it was sincere that this thing about the, the wealth gap in home ?
ownership between black and white, which led to disparities in wealth ?
creation, which led to disparities in education. I wanted to do my part ?
to correct that. Uh, but the other thing that was important to me when I ?
went to Fannie Mae was that Frank Rains was there, uh, they brought on ?
New Hos to run multi-family. Mm-hmm. . Uh, and so I also wanted to be at ?
a place, you know, Morgan Stanley did a lot for adversity. I don't think ?
they got enough credit, but I wanted to be a place where I didn't feel I ?
had to fight every day for that. I wanted to be a place where I felt ?
valued and I wanted to give back in that sense.?

Ken Bacon (01:09:44) - So, you know, all my mentors on Wall Street, a lot ?
of 'em have been women. And that was another thing I liked about Fannie ?
Mae, was that I saw women in a position and Logan, uh, who had run my ?
region. I ran the Philadelphia region for six years and became Chief ?
Credit Officer. So, uh, the values of the company, uh, were important ?
because that's what I wanted to do. And I'm very proud of the fact that ?
when I left, uh, Philadelphia, that Zach Oppenheimer, uh, took over a guy ?
who had worked for me. When I left, uh, multi-family, it was Jeff ?
Hayward, who was a black man who had worked for me. And when Jeff left, ?
it was Michelle Evans, who runs it today, who had also worked for me, a ?
woman. I'm very proud that when I left places, that I left them better. ?
But I left.?

Ken Bacon (01:10:37) - I trained people who went after me. And I'm very ?
proud of that. And so, at Fannie, I got to help some women. I got to help ?
some black, I got to help some white, I got to help people who later, I ?
mean, now the, the Head of Agency Lending and JP Morgan, Vince Toy worked ?
for me. Hillary Province, who oversees all the multifamily, uh, Hillary ?
worked for me. Uh, uh, I mean, every dust center, there's somebody in ?
work for me. Now, some of 'em might say, Ken didn't have a damn thing, do ?
my career. But I'm just proud of 'em that I touched him.?

John Coe (01:11:09) - So you went, you started in in single family, ?
right? Yeah. Yeah. And then evolved to multi-family. Did, yeah. Did were ?
you in the origins of the multi of the Dust program, or

Ken Bacon (01:11:20) - No. Uhuh. That was Larry Dale.?

John Coe (01:11:22) - Okay.?

Ken Bacon (01:11:22) - Who was a, who, who was a, he was a great man, ?
deserves a lot of credit for what he did. Larry started it. Larry had a ?
deep, deep, deep sense of mission cuz he had been at hud, uh, uh, you ?
know, he started the Dust program. It was interesting, both Fannie and ?
Freddy's multi-family programs had people who had learned from failure. ?
Larry saw what happened with hud, the d r g fiasco. Uh, uh, Adrian ?
Corbert came out of a life company at Freddy. And the reason that the ?
Fanny and Freddy Multi-family programs did not go down the tubes in 2008 ?
was that they were started and run by people who knew that things could ?
go bad. Single family at the GSEs went bad. You know, one of the things I ?
always say about risk management, the most important thing in risk ?
management is imagination. You know, you can't prepare for a scenario ?
that you don't imagine. And Larry Adrian, those people who started those ?
programs, they went through the eighties, they saw that a property could ?
go from a value of X to 30% of X than it could happen. And they created ?
programs, different approaches, but all with the same objective in mind.?

John Coe (01:12:47) - I'm gonna argue with you with one point. Yeah. With ?
that point. Yeah. You mentioned Ace Greenberg. Mm-hmm.  and Dick Fold. ?
Mm-hmm.  did they anticipate what was gonna happen in 2008??

Ken Bacon (01:12:57) - Dick Fold didn't, if Ace Greenberg had been ?
around, bear Stearns would not have gone down.?

John Coe (01:13:01) - Well that's interesting.?

Ken Bacon (01:13:03) - Ace and the reason why Ace knew at the end of ?
every day, his mark to Mark, he had spies on the trading floor. He had ?
people reported directly to him, not the traders. And he knew it fold. I ?
don't think, I mean, Greenburg knew trading. He knew the risk. He knew ?
how to manage them. He knew how to watch fold. Uh, I'm not saying he was ?
a bad guy. I just don't think that the instincts were there in the ?
systems When Ace left, when Jimmy King got there, you know, when you read ?
about it, they were playing bridge. He didn't focus on the business like ?
Ace Greenberg did. Ace was like, there was no, there weren't gonna be any ?
losses because the minute he saw loss, it was like, what are you doing to ?
liquidate? What are you doing to manage it? He was on top of it,?

John Coe (01:13:55) - But the, they just got ahead of themselves with ?
this whole structuring piece. And I, I'd be interested in your ?
perspective on how that all happened. Cuz you, you were inside all that,?

Ken Bacon (01:14:05) - You know, mortgages, I tell people, I once had a ?
conversation with Larry Fink when he was still at, uh, credit Sus first ?
Boston. This is before BlackRock. And I talked to him, I asked him how he ?
got the mortgages. And basically he, he said mortgages where they sent ?
the people, they didn't feel fit in the corporate finance. The mortgage ?
area was, you think about Luna was not an Ivan League guy. No, it was, it ?
was Italians, it was Jews, few black guys. It, it, we were the people who ?
didn't fit.?

John Coe (01:14:40) - Liars Poker. Yeah.?

Ken Bacon (01:14:41) - . And, but it was a very quantitative field. And ?
very few people who ran investment banks understood it. And even a lot of ?
the traders didn't understand it. It was, it, it it was, you know, trying ?
to predict those cash flows. And if you look, no business has done more ?
to sync, uh, reputations and banks than mortgages and real estate. ?
Nothing. Not junk bonds, not m and a, not tech, real estate, commercial. ?
Uh, and mortgage backed securities have done a lot. And I knew that, you ?
know, I knew that, uh, I understood the cycles. And my predecessors, ?
Larry, Dale, Lou Hoz, the people who came after me, uh, uh, and Adrian, ?
Mike, Mike May, David Brickman, you never saw anybody at the GSCs on the ?
multi-family side loosened the credit ratings. So in 2008 came, they ?
didn't lose money. Um, and uh, the firms that lost money usually lost it ?
because they didn't watch their traders. They didn't watch the traders, ?
or they ignored the advice. So, uh, there were people who got ignored. I ?
know that I, you know, I, I won't mention names Freddy, I won't mention ?
names in some of these Wall Street firms, but there were situations where ?
people tried to tell their CEOs, you shouldn't do this. And people didn't ?
always listen and didn't understand what they were told. You know. Well,?

John Coe (01:16:20) - The story about Lehman Brothers is classic of that. ?
Yeah,?

Ken Bacon (01:16:24) - Yeah,?

John Coe (01:16:24) - Exactly.?

Ken Bacon (01:16:26) - Lehman, uh, Merrill. Yeah. Um, yeah. People got in ?
the situations, they didn't know what they were doing.?

John Coe (01:16:33) - They didn't listen to the risk people. That's

Ken Bacon (01:16:34) - Right. That's

John Coe (01:16:36) - Right. That's interesting. Take a break. Mm-hmm.?

Ken Bacon (01:16:40) - , here we go.?

John Coe (01:16:44) - So let's talk a little bit more about, uh, your ?
multi-family division experience. Mm-hmm. , uh, talk about some of your ?
initiatives and experiences there. When Freddie Mac emerged as a major ?
competitor, did that help your business discuss some of the differences ?
in similarities between the programs? Uh, just as a side, I was employed ?
by Lake Mason Uhhuh. . At one point we were a seller servicer to Freddy ?
mm-hmm. . But we decided as a company at the time, not to do the Fannie ?
Mae Dust program because of the, cuz of the co-insurance risk. Yeah. ?
Maybe talk about that distinction between the fa, Fannie, and Freddie ?
program and Okay. Why you decided to do that.?

Ken Bacon (01:17:21) - Okay. Well, each program reflects their historical ?
roots and experience. Uh, Larry Dales the dust, uh, who started dus, ?
learned from the experiences of hud, uh, insurance programs. And ?
basically a lot of people, like did bad underwriting, did bad deals, and ?
stuck HUD with it. So Larry started from the standpoint like, you know ?
what, I've gotta have a program where people have skin in the game. Mm-?
hmm. , it has to be a form of code insurance. Mm-hmm.  Freddy was more ?
like a life company. Mm-hmm. , you know, in other words, you can ?
originate, but we are gonna do the underwriting. So both, like, in other ?
words, one person said, I'm gonna make sure the underwriting is right ?
cause you're gonna have skin in the game. Mm-hmm. , the other one said, I ?
wanna make sure it's right cause I'm gonna do it. So, and, and it's ?
interesting, uh, also I'd say Fanny probably had more of a mission focus, ?
uh, on affordable, uh, than Freddy did. Uh, Freddy, uh, again, like a ?
life company, they were not only underwriting the, the real estate, they ?
were also underwriting the borrower.?

John Coe (01:18:36) - That's right.?

Ken Bacon (01:18:37) - Where Fannie was less concerned about the borrower ?
were more concerned about cash flow. Fannie was more likely to do a small ?
loan.?

John Coe (01:18:45) - That's interesting.?

Ken Bacon (01:18:46) - Uh, but, you know, I had all the respect in the ?
world for Freddie. Uh, I liked Adrian, I liked Mike May, I liked David ?
Brickman mm-hmm. . So I was never gonna say anything bad about him ?
because I liked them. I respected them. They were good people. They knew ?
what they were doing. I wanted to beat 'em. Uh, and

John Coe (01:19:08) - Was it good that they were there? So you had the ?
competition and stuff like Oh

Ken Bacon (01:19:11) - Yeah. I, I think it was good because a, it was ?
additional liquidity in the market. Right. And it was also good because I ?
think, you know, the key to life is always having choices. That's right. ?
And so, you know, it's best when you are the only game in town. I used to ?
even tell some borrowers, I'd say, you know, you ought to have a ?
relationship with Freddy. He said, why? Because I said, I want you to do ?
business with me because you think I got the best deal. Because you want ?
to, not because you have to. Right.?

John Coe (01:19:39) - Talk about the distinction between Fed Freddy and ?
Fanny and hud mm-hmm.  and their lending process, which in my experience ?
as a mortgage banker mm-hmm.  was a disaster. .?

Ken Bacon (01:19:52) - Here I'll be, I'll try to be a little bit ?
politically astute. .?

Ken Bacon (01:19:56) - I think the problem with HUD is that HUD never got ?
the appropriate resources and systems, but also they were like held ?
captive to their industry. There have been disasters and blowups things ?
have done at hud, uh, that lenders have done that. If that had been Fanny ?
of Freddy, they, we would've put those lenders out of business. We ?
wouldn't let 'em do it. So, but Hud the danger to me of any bureaucracy, ?
and I told you about my experience in, in the uk. So, you know, look, I ?
grew up in kind of a democratic family. And I, I, I'd say, I tell people ?
I'm the mayor without a party today cuz I'm either conservative, ?
Democrat, moderate Republican. It is hard for government to do lending ?
because at the end of the day, someone's gotta be held accountable. Mm-?
hmm. . And the problem with, uh, a government bureaucracy, there's no ?
upside in saying, in saying yes, there's no upside in jumping on a ?
problem.?

Ken Bacon (01:20:58) - So you kick the can down the road. Uh, and so ?
that's why there's been so many blowups with fha. And, you know, because ?
as government you can't tell someone you're not good enough to be a ?
lender. Well, you know, you know yourself. That Freddy, even though you ?
didn't have to put up capital, Freddy was like, I'm not just gonna let ?
everybody be my seller servicer. And at Fanny, I purposely kept the ?
number of dust lenders small. Mm-hmm. , I said, look, I want everybody to ?
make, I want all of dust lenders to make a lot of money because they're ?
my capital partners. Uh, I wanted to make money, uh, but I also wanted to ?
make money because that gave me control. Because basically like if you ?
get outta line, I'll take it away. Right. You've got a good thing going, ?
but you gotta act. Right.?

Ken Bacon (01:21:48) - And, you know, I, there were some uncomfortable ?
conversations, but I never had a case of fraud with the dust slender. I ?
never had to just, you know, snatch it away. Take it away from 'em. If ?
you, if you think about it, if you look at the Fannie and Freddie multi-?
family programs, they have been remarkably given the volume that they've ?
done scandal free mm-hmm.  remarkably, not only in terms of the lenders, ?
but even the loans. Does that mean we haven't had loans go bad? But I'm ?
just saying, if you go look at the credit performance and look at the ?
risk that they've taken, they've done an extraordinary job. Mm-hmm.  ?
extraordinary job. And, and I think that's the advantage. Like we limited ?
both agencies and limited who they do business with. And one of the ?
things, in fact, I just did this. I was at a conference with Artemis the ?
other day, and I told them something that my mother told me when I was ?
getting married, that I applied to business when I told my mother that, ?
you know, I was engaged and we sat down and talked and she, uh, my mother ?
didn't use French that much, but this is one time she did.?

Ken Bacon (01:22:57) - And there was a, uh, sand that had southwest ?
Louisiana, uh, pro, pro that when you take a wife or take a husband, you ?
take the country, Marie husband or wife pay the country. And what that ?
meant is when you married somebody, you took everything with them. Mm-?
hmm. . And my, and some people said that's for better or worse. But, but ?
from my mother's perspective, what she was saying is, okay, do you know ?
Judy's family? Do you know her friends? Do y'all share the same values? ?
Right. Are you gonna embrace the same things? Because she said, when you ?
get married, when that priest says, I do, you know, that was a very ?
serious commitment to her. But she was also saying, not only do you need ?
to know all these relationships, can you embrace them? Can you make them ?
part yours? And can she say the same thing about you??

Ken Bacon (01:23:48) - Right. And I've applied that. That's was my ?
feeling of business. You know, you can have either do business with ?
people where it's a transaction or it's a relationship. Now, you know, ?
there were some cases, we did deals of relationships, but all my lenders, ?
you know, I spent, I mean, I knew the head of each one of my lenders when ?
I said I knew 'em, it wasn't just a captain. I knew them. I spent time ?
with them. Uh, and my big borrowers, I mentioned Sam Zel. You, I, I spent ?
time with Sam Zel, Steve Ross Dub Brodsky's in New York, the Sobrato's in ?
California, uh, Rick Campbell, or Campbell, I met, if somebody had more ?
than several hundred million of exposure to him, I said, I wanna meet him ?
because there's a contract. But a relationship goes beyond the contract.?

John Coe (01:24:36) - Of course.?

Ken Bacon (01:24:36) - And, and if I didn't feel comfortable with ?
somebody, and I won't, well, well, I'll give you an example. I can ?
mention one Donald C one the Clippers. And I discovered that, you know, ?
about his attitude. This is before stuff came out the Clippers, but his ?
record on fair housing was not good. And I read some of the things and I ?
said, I don't wanna do business with this guy. Right. I'm saying I don't ?
wanna do business with him. Uh, I'm not saying all these people had to be ?
angels, but I didn't want to feel I was gonna do business with anybody ?
who didn't reflect the values of Fannie Mae. And I didn't want to do ?
business with somebody where like, I was gonna have to lawyer up if ?
something went wrong.?

John Coe (01:25:18) - Well, it's interesting, uh, what you just explained ?
Yeah. Uh, is what I learned when I was a mortgage banker. Yeah. That ?
relationships were more important. The lender needed to know.?

Ken Bacon (01:25:28) - That's right.?

John Coe (01:25:30) - The borrower. Yep. So, uh, and that was part of my ?
job, was to make sure that, you know, with, especially with large ?
relationships mm-hmm. , we would go, I mean, I represented Aetna mm-hmm. ?
?. So we'd go to Hartford, take them there, take the borrower there, meet ?
the, meet the lender mm-hmm.  and have the interface so they knew who ?
they were dealing with mm-hmm.  and uh, you know, it's just, it was a ?
mentality like that.?

Ken Bacon (01:25:53) - And that was a mentality. You know, like I said, ?
that was Freddy and Fannie because the lenders did it. But even then, ?
like I said, my lenders knew their customers. Of course. And you know, I, ?
I had relationships. I remember after nine 11, uh, we had done a loan ?
with Arcs, Howard Levine and Howard wanted to take full risk sharing on ?
it. I remember I said, Howard, I don't know if you should do that. This ?
is before nine 11. It was just the size of the loan. I said, if something ?
happened and he said, Ken, it's good for it. I'm doing this with this ?
guy. Dina Adler. B Adler, Dean Adler. Yes. So nine 11 happens. Yeah. And ?
of course they can't pay. And, uh, questionnaires is a lender eat this, ?
which would've put the lender under. Was it an act of God? So lawyers are ?
going through everything.?

Ken Bacon (01:26:40) - I had a relationship with Howard. I didn't know ?
Dean. And the lawyers were talking, you know, they're saying after God, ?
people said, no, we need to take this property and everything. And I ?
finally said, you know, let, let me meet this guy. And we met. And the ?
reason I tell you that we have a relationship to this day, cuz I, I went ?
to New York to visit that building and I'll never forget that. I remember ?
going in that building and there were still yellow tape. I had to get ?
permission from the police to go. Me and one of my, my vice presidents ?
went. And I remember I got to the top of that building and there were ?
seats from the airliner on top of the building. Wow. I remember like, and ?
I said, oh my God. Wow. And, um, we worked it out, but it was ?
relationship.?

Ken Bacon (01:27:29) - I, I basically told the lawyer, sit down, didn't ?
tell your lawyer, sit down, let's meet me talking. And I could see he was ?
an honorable guy. Right. And he was gonna do the right thing with this ?
building. So I went back and said, okay, this is what we're gonna do. Um, ?
and you know, I I, there was another bar, I won't mention the name, who ?
my people didn't want to do business with because they had been, I think ?
he had once threatened, declare bankruptcy years ago. And I met with him, ?
the guy from Texas, and I discovered he liked cutting horses. And I used ?
to ride horses. So I had, we started talking about his studs and his ?
horses. And I could see in one way, I tell the people, we can do this. ?
And you know, that's, like I said, I met, uh, I met Sam Zel.?

Ken Bacon (01:28:19) - Now David never cut, uh, mark Perel. I thought, ?
what I still think of great people, would they beat me up. Oh hell yeah. ?
But I used to even contrast Eqr of Archstone. The difference was, was ?
that Eqr would say, Ken, here's the, here's the boaty, here's what the ?
proceeds, here's, here's what the coupon was. And I knew that if I got ?
that, we were good. Archstone might say, this is what we want. And I'd go ?
through hell. And then at the end of the day, they might say, yeah, but ?
you know what? I know that's what I told you. But not afraid. He's five ?
bits better. So it was a different, I used to call that more of a ?
transaction, by the way, excellent firm. The guys were great. They just ?
had, it was just a different type of relationship. And the difference ?
was, was that I knew that I could go through hell of high water eqr and I ?
get rewarded if I did it archstone. That might be. So maybe I'm not gonna ?
try as hard or maybe I'm gonna check along the way. But again, I never ?
worried about them repaying me. I never worried about them doing the ?
right thing. So these were great companies.?

John Coe (01:29:29) - Well, your Wall Street experience told you a lot ?
about that.?

Ken Bacon (01:29:32) - Yes. Yeah. , you know who, who's gonna retrain me. ?
That's

John Coe (01:29:35) - Right. Right.?

Ken Bacon (01:29:36) - And, uh, that's right. Uh,?

John Coe (01:29:38) - But you know,?

Ken Bacon (01:29:39) - And that's, I have to tell you, that is a part of ?
the business I enjoyed. That's the part of the business I missed, was the ?
people. Yeah. I mean, I would go out and look at properties with people ?
and you could tell people who were good because they would be so excited ?
about what they were doing. Mm-hmm. . And that's what I loved about the

John Coe (01:29:57) - Business. That's great. That's great. So the global ?
financial crisis came mm-hmm.  and the GSC needed to restructure to ?
become basically government agencies. Mm-hmm.  talk about that period and ?
its impact. And you remained there through 2012. So, uh, you were ?
involved in that whole reframing of mm-hmm.  that, how did that impact ?
your, you and your business at the time??

Ken Bacon (01:30:24) - Well, I remember where I was when I got the word ?
about that. We were getting taken over by the government. I was at a ?
conference in California and Laguna Neal stand the montage with my wife.?

John Coe (01:30:34) - Pretty nice place.?

Ken Bacon (01:30:36) - Yep. And look at a hard year. And I got a call ?
from Dan Muds, someone in the office called and said, you gotta come back ?
to Washington. I said, the hell I will. I'm not going back. Well, Dan, I ?
said, tell Dan I'm not coming back. It's been too hard. So finally Dan ?
Muds, chief of staff, called me and said, Ken, you gotta come back. I ?
said, man, I don't know if you got a word. I said, I said, bill, I'm ?
sitting out here in a room. I'm looking out on the Pacific Ocean

John Coe (01:31:03) - .?

Ken Bacon (01:31:04) - My wife and I are getting ready to go to dinner. ?
And he said, Ken, I'm not supposed to tell you this. The government's ?
taken over. A lot of people gonna let go. I said, I'm on the red eye. I ?
took the red eye back. And you know, it's funny. Nine 11 was a beautiful ?
day. This was a beautiful day. That's, that's, I remembered. I literally ?
remember coming home, sitting in my dinner off the red eye. I'm tired. ?
And I had a couple hours before we had to go down to the regulator's ?
office. Herb Allison was there. So it was me and a handful of people. And ?
they told us what was gonna happen. And you know, I'm sitting up there ?
going like, my stock is wiped out. And I come back home. Dan Mud lived ?
down the street from me. And, you know, you might criticize Dan for some ?
of the decisions he made, but I, he's a great guy.?

Ken Bacon (01:31:57) - And I went down and me, Dan and his wife sat up ?
and drank two bottles of wine. I watched his kids and I went back home ?
and, you know, I had told my wife, but I didn't tell her the full extent, ?
the economic thing. And I wondered, what about my business? How am I ?
going to educate my kids? I, I'm just having all these thoughts. And, um, ?
and when I went into work, I realized that look, as bad as it is for me, ?
it's worse for my people. So, uh, I go back and I said, let, let me do ?
what, what I say about my people, what about my customers? And so those ?
were the thoughts. And I'm not gonna lie, I thought about leaving, but ?
then I turned on the television last morning when they were closing down ?
Lehman. And I said, only s where, where could I go??

Ken Bacon (01:32:58) - So I said, you know, I gotta stick this out. And I ?
had been through, you know, remember Fannie may have been through the ?
accounting scanner. Mm-hmm. . So I had been through one thing. So I'm ?
asking myself, do you have the guts and the fortitude to go through ?
another thing? And this was happening while all types of stuff was ?
happening in my personal life. Because when, if you go back to 2004, I ?
had two aunts. I had a uncle, a mother, a father, a grandmother, and a ?
granddaughter. And starting in late 2004, one by one they dropped mm-hmm. ?
?. And each time something bad would happen. So a counting scandal ?
happens. December, 2004. January, 2005, my mother dies. My grandmother ?
dies August. I mean, every year. So here's 2008. The only relative, like ?
I got an uncle and my dad still alive. And I spent all this money over ?
the years.?

Ken Bacon (01:33:58) - Cause at one point in time I had two people in ?
nursing homes. So, you know, I'm, I'm just looking at the economic ?
collapse cuz you know, my net worth is wiped out. And, uh, there's no ?
place to go. So I just said, okay, I'm gonna stay. And Herb Allison was a ?
fair man, but I learned something else. You know, my attitude was, I've ?
done my job, I've done a good job. Right. And if there's blame here, ?
let's blame the bank regulators who let people do this. Let's blame the S ?
E c. In other words, there's a lot of blame. But all the blame seem to ?
fall on Fannie and Fannie and all the hate that accumulated over Fannie ?
Mae's, uh, political activities came to the for. So her Allison comes in ?
and I remember I had offices in Bethesda, multifamily in Bethesda then. ?
And he comes up and we do his presentation.?

Ken Bacon (01:34:57) - And so at the end, I said, so her, you see that we ?
have a, a sound business from a credit perspective that's profitable. And ?
he looked at me and said, so you say, and I was stunned. I couldn't ?
believe it. And he said that, not because he was being mean, but cuz his ?
attitude was like, y'all failed. So something ain't right. And you, you ?
probably, I was guilty by association. And a few months later when we ?
went in, it was bonus time, of course we weren't gonna get a bonus. And ?
he asked me how I did. So I said, blah, blah, blah. I thought we had a ?
good year. But you know, clearly company suffered and he led into it. ?
That's the problem. You're telling me how well you did and blah, blah. I ?
said her, I was not the ceo. You asked me and I said, I did my best to ?
see two my customers, my book of business, my lenders and my employees ?
did the right thing.?

Ken Bacon (01:35:54) - And that's all I'm telling you. Right? Yeah. There ?
were mistakes made, uh, you know, but he, his feelings, you're senior ?
management, you have to take the blame. And that made me very angry. But ?
I said, you know what? Cuz remember I had been on the other side of the ?
table, rtc mm-hmm. . So I had shut down people. I had seen it. So I said, ?
okay, this is where I am. And I remember that, you know, this is all the ?
fall of 2008, early 2009, my father's ill. And I remember I go to ?
Houston, uh, my father's dying. He's on a ventilator. And my brother ?
calls and says, looks like dad's on the last leg. So I get on the plane, ?
he dies while I'm in the air. So I get to Houston. And again, uh, you ?
know, I've, every I've lost relative. So I'm like now a pro with doing ?
funerals.?

Ken Bacon (01:36:50) - And I remember when my mother died, I got a call ?
that was the accounting scandal where someone said, you're not gonna get ?
a bonus. And they said, hate to tell you that. And I said, and I remember ?
saying at that time, you know, all the money in the world, I can bring my ?
mama back. Well, this time I get to call and someone says, Kim, I know ?
this is a sensitive moment when you get back, you need to talk to ?
corporate security. I said, about what, what we'll explain when you get ?
back. And so I'm going, why is it that every time, you know, I, you know, ?
I've lost my dad's. I'm trying to concentrate on that. Well, what had ?
happened, somebody in Congress published the salaries of everybody. See, ?
at that point in time, they'll put the CEOs here. My compensation was not ?
public.?

Ken Bacon (01:37:33) - And when they made it public, they monitored the ?
internet. Threats started coming in. And I didn't know it, but people had ?
called my office and threatened. But my secretary, I wasn't there. My ?
secretary intercepted . So this is funny. This is where the funny comes ?
here. So I go there and the head of corporate security, Fannie Ma says, ?
McKen, uh, we've raised our threat assessment on you. Uh, you were ?
yellow, but now it's an orange. It's heading towards red. I said, what's ?
that mean? Well, there've been non-specific threats. We've notified the ?
local police, uh, you might have some demonstrators show up at your ?
house. And if someone tries to force their way in, if they forced their ?
way in, we've told the police. So I said, force away in my house. I said, ?
well, I call the police, I'm calling for body bags. He says, what do you ?
mean??

Ken Bacon (01:38:20) - So I look at this guy I said, I said, man, you ?
know where, where I'm from? He said, what do you mean? I said, I said, ?
I'm from Texas. He said, what's that mean? I said, I'm from Texas. I ?
said, I'm an old school Texas. He said, what's that mean? I said, I ?
honked. And he looked at me and I said, I can shoot everything from a ?
squirrel to an elephant of what I got in my cell. And if you're telling ?
me, I said, ain't nobody forcing me wearing in my house. Nobody's gonna ?
threaten my wife and show me if they do. That's what me want their so me. ?
And oh my God, they freaked the hell out. They had the police come, they ?
had somebody come by, do a security. My house . But I remember, like, I ?
could not believe that somebody was going remember occupying Wall Street.?

Ken Bacon (01:39:04) - Oh, sure. Yeah. And every time I heard a branch ?
freak at night, I was ready to jump up  and, uh, uh, those were like, it, ?
it it, it was hard. Cause like I said, you felt like I've done the right ?
thing. I've been an audible person and I'm getting tired with this brush. ?
And I took her, asked me to go up to Congress with him when he had to ?
give testimony. And the congressman leaked. They acted like Fannie Mae ?
had broken in their house at night, stole a silver, raped their wife, and ?
set the house on fire. And what it was, it was a legacy of the years that ?
Fannie Mae had lobbied against stricter regulations. Mm-hmm. . So they ?
were angry about stuff that had happened years ago. But now they felt ?
they got us. And so I, and after I hear, I said, you know, I gotta leave.?

Ken Bacon (01:39:49) - But when Herb left, they make my Williams ?
president, uh, you know, who had been one of my peers. Mike trusted me. ?
He backed me. And my only issue running the department, I had to try to ?
keep employees together. My only issue was with some people at the ?
regulator who, uh, and I remember how they tried to make me increase my ?
reserves more than I thought they should, which I refused to do. Uh, and ?
fortunately the head of accounting backed me. I had issues with some of ?
the outside, you know, they were trying to make me do this and that, and ?
they took some things away from me. Um, but I kept that out loyalty to my ?
people in the business. And so what I told Mike is I said, look, my ?
daughter graduates from high school in 2011, and after that, at some ?
point in time, I'm gonna want to go.?

Ken Bacon (01:40:40) - And, uh, I was burnt out. Uh, uh, I was tired of ?
fighting. Uh, if you look at the top, let's say dozen executives at ?
Fannie Mae in January of 2005, by January of 2009, there were three of us ?
left. Everybody had the divorce out left. Wow. And so, um, a stop was ?
wiped out. So by the time I got to 2012, I was like, I'm out. I didn't ?
know what I was gonna do. And a guy came up from, uh, Texas who ran a, ?
uh, in the energy business who I had met, and he belonged to Burning ?
Tree. So we're riding over the Burning Tree, playing golf. And he says, ?
Kenny, uh, what you going to do when you leave? I said, man, I'm going to ?
try to get finally become a good golfer. I'm gonna go hunting. And beyond ?
that, I can't tell you.?

Ken Bacon (01:41:35) - And he said, Kenny, there's only so many rounds of ?
golf and so many gear you can shoot before that gets tired, you better ?
think of something else. Mm-hmm. , I, I just, I just couldn't think. And, ?
uh, what happened, A guy who had worked in Fannie Mae, Darren Thompson, ?
who left him, oh, he had left him a long time ago, uh, had gone to one of ?
Steve Case's, companies that had been successful. Yeah. Had been sold mm-?
hmm. . Uh, and he called me and said, Hey, what do you think about doing? ?
Why do we get together and do something? So that's how my ex I I, I did ?
not have a specific plan. I didn't think about doing this. I didn't think ?
about anything. Mm-hmm. , I just wanted to get out of the, the storm.?

John Coe (01:42:19) - So talk about Rayford and how, how Rails field and ?
how you got started.?

Ken Bacon (01:42:24) - So, uh, first of all, I'll tell you how we got the ?
name. Okay. So Darren had had the idea to have kind of a financial ?
advisory business that could morph into something else.?

John Coe (01:42:34) - So who's Darren again??

Ken Bacon (01:42:34) - Darren Thompson. He had been in credit, but Darren ?
had worked, had been managing director. Morgan Stanley Goldman came to ?
Fannie Mae, left Fannie Mae to go to one of Steve Case's companies that ?
got it, the credit card process. Uhhuh . So he had been talking with a ?
Chinese American guy who had worked in Morgan Stanley. And they were ?
talking about their past in life. And some kind of way Chinese gentleman ?
mentioned how his great-grandfather, a great-great-grandfather to come ?
here to work on the railroads. And Darren said when he was working on the ?
railroad, my ancestors were probably working in condo fields. So he took ?
a railroad field and put it together. So that guy decided not to do it, ?
but Darren had already had formed the LLC car rail field. So when I came ?
along, I said, that name is fine. Right. I didn't care what the name was ?
mm-hmm.?

Ken Bacon (01:43:26) - . And we got a contract from the insurance ?
company. We had an insurance company, uh, contract from a government ?
agency and an online real estate platform. So we had three financial ?
advisory contracts, and I had done business with Penny Pritzker. Uh, ?
Darren, uh, knew Debbie Harmon from the board of City Artemis. Yeah. And ?
Debbie asked to meet with me and said, Hey, would you guys, you're ?
starting a business and we'll let you sit with us if you serve on our ?
advisory board and biases. And that's how we ended up at Artemis. So ?
we're sitting up at Artemis. We subcontracted a lot of this work. And it ?
was funny, both of us were increasingly bored with the advisory stuff ?
because you'd advise people. We were both used to running stuff Right. ?
And doing stuff. And every time Artemis would do a deal, an apartment ?
deal, they'd say, Hey, we're having truck.?

Ken Bacon (01:44:21) - Can you, who should we call it? Fannie? Who should ?
we call it? Freddy, what do you think about this? Borrow? What do you ?
think about this market? So they had some money from New York Common for ?
Emerging Manager program. And one day we got no conversation, basically, ?
would you be interested in investing some money? And I remember the Daryl ?
Carter, who had owned one of my lenders, had now had his own business mm-?
hmm. . And when I called Daryl, they would think about it. Darrell said, ?
Kim, they're gonna give you just enough money to go broke. And he laughed ?
and he was right. , I, I didn't know the whole economics in the business, ?
but the reason I did it, you know, when I once talked with Sam Zell, when ?
I was, when I, when I knew I was gonna leave Fannie and I was get, and I ?
was, I think we were the Bulls game or something, he said, you oughta do ?
what you know, you know, lending, you don't know equity.?

Ken Bacon (01:45:13) - And I, so I never thought about doing equity when ?
I, but I used to joke with my lenders, oh, I'm gonna come back one day on ?
the other side of the table. So when the opportunity presented itself, ?
uh, and I had people approach me about starting the Dustland, but I had a ?
feeling, been there, done that, and it probably would've been the best ?
thing to do financially. Uh, and I always felt there was a need for ?
diversity among my dust lenders. Mm-hmm. . So I had always been very ?
supportive of Rodrigo Lopez. I've been very supportive of Herman. Uh, and ?
I was very proud of that. But I wanted to do something different. And ?
this opportunity came up. And uh, and so that's how we started Real ?
field. I called Todd and John, two guys that worked for me. I went up to ?
New York Common, I looked at their portfolio, I saw they had a hole that ?
they hadn't done a lot in Texas, cuz Texas was blowing up on 'em.?

Ken Bacon (01:46:10) - I told 'em what I thought they had done wrong. So ?
this came together very quickly and we started off, uh, uh, you know, in ?
this area. Uh, we were just next door. And, um, it was hard because I ?
knew from my time at the RTC that when, you know, when you have the big ?
job, whether it was, you know, running securitization to RTC around ?
multi-family, Fannie Mae, I always like to tell people like, you know, ?
yeah, one day you are a visionary, you're a great leader at your ?
strategic genius. And you walk out the door at Fannie Mae and the next ?
day you're just a brother with a PC and a dream .?

John Coe (01:46:52) - There you

Ken Bacon (01:46:53) - Go. And that's what I was, so there were a lot of ?
people I had helped with Fannie Mae and I knew that a lot of people were ?
gonna turn their backs on me. I was surprised that some of the people who ?
I thought would be helpful, who weren't. But then there were other ?
people. And I've always said, you just never know. Hal Holiday owe that ?
man a huge debt of gratitude, uh, was helpful. Uh, Greg Cola at ?
Fairfield, uh, uh, John Vaccaro, who had been at, uh, Deutscher and then ?
was a can Fitzgerald, uh, uh, uh, some of the people at Arcadia, there ?
were some lenders who were helpful people in Meridian, Ralph Hertzler. I ?
mean, like I said, you just can't say who that's gonna be. You know, ?
there's gonna be somebody, and there are other people I'm not gonna ?
mention, there were some people who I thought, yeah, they're gonna be ?
there. And you know, I used to joke and say, Hey man, it's Ken. Hello, ?
hello. You know, they weren't there. What

John Coe (01:47:53) - About your HBS classmates? Any of them??

Ken Bacon (01:47:56) - Um, I didn't call on anybody from HBS directly, ?
but there were one or two people who were very, uh, in fact some of my ?
closest friends were very, uh, supportive e emotional support, you know, ?
cuz again, you know, to lose as much money as I did, uh, and to start as ?
an entrepreneur at that stage in life. Yeah. Um, and you know, it's ?
funny, I never, the only time I ever thought about what I lost, I think ?
about what I lost when I go to Martha's Dream for the summer, because I ?
had plans to buy a house and I went away and I stopped up like that. And, ?
um, so that's really the only time I I think about the economic aspect of ?
it. Uh, other than that, my feeling was, look, I had a good ride. And ?
this is another occasion when race I think comes in my favor.?

Ken Bacon (01:48:58) - Once I was at Morgan Stanley and there I had a ?
dispute about my bonus. It was several hundred thousand dollars. And I ?
remember that I used to call my parents every Sunday when I called my ?
mother, my mother being tough, and my mother. And I was like, I can't ?
believe mama what they did. And my mother said, boy, you too old and too ?
black to expect life to be fair. So I don't want to hear. No. Wh so she ?
said, you either go in, she said, you either be a man, man up and take ?
it, or you go in there and tell that man to kiss your ass and go find ?
yourself another job, but, you know, make up your mind what you're going ?
to do.?

Ken Bacon (01:49:36) - And I, that was the cold water. She's tough. And, ?
and then when I called my grandmother, my father's mother, who I live ?
with, and she said, baby, you don't sound good. And I started to tell ?
her, then I realized, how can I tell somebody who made money in a kitchen ?
who cooked and took care of other people's children? How can I tell her ?
I'm upset about a hundred thousand dollars? And she never seen that much ?
money in her life. And so when this stuff happened in Fannie Mae, again, ?
my, you know, when the government took over, my mother was gone. But I ?
thought about what my mother would've said. I thought about my ?
grandmother and I said, you know what? Yeah, I lost a lot, but I'm ?
blessed. Uh, I'm still married. My kids are doing fine. I'm not broke. ?
I'm just not as wealthy as I wanted to be. And so, you know, uh, and I ?
thought about telling the people I grew up with. So, you know, you can ?
always look at the glass being half empty, half full. And so yeah, I had ?
some friends in New York, some friends in Texas who were doing a hell of ?
a lot better. But then I also knew that, you know what, there a lot of ?
people a lot worse off. So don't feel sorry for yourself. I thought what ?
my mother said, you know, like, you know, life ain't fair, get over it.?

John Coe (01:50:57) - But what you did do is you built relationships. ?
Yes. And those relationships is where why you're where you are today. ?
Right? That's right. So talk about that. Talk about, you know, the ?
evolution of Brasfield, how it, how it grew and what

Ken Bacon (01:51:11) - Well, like I say, when we started, um, the people ?
arguments were very helpful,?

John Coe (01:51:16) - Right??

Ken Bacon (01:51:17) - Uh, and I had customers I had done business with ?
who were helpful. Rick Campo was helpful. Uh, we won a bid there. Uh, we ?
didn't execute on it because, you know, that was the first deal I'd done ?
with Artemis. In hindsight, I think we started a lot too big, and it ?
didn't happen. But Campo gave me a crack and hell Holiday was very ?
supportive. So the first deal we did, uh, in San Antonio, uh, it was a ?
CBR e broker, CBR e financing. They didn't force that on me, but we did ?
it because of the relationship. Um, and, uh, we did a deal in 2014. We ?
did a deal in 2015. The Artemis program changed. That money was from New ?
York Common. And so we wandered in the, you know, as I tell people, we ?
wandered in the desert for lack, about a year. We didn't do a deal ?
really.?

Ken Bacon (01:52:11) - That was tough. That was very tough. But we found ?
more money. We found family offices. Uh, we found, uh, went to Ralph ?
Herko one time I was at a conference, in fact, the same multi-family ?
conference I ran across Ralph Herko. He called me up to the suite and ?
said, Ken, you were very helpful to us. What can I do? I said, man, I ?
need some money. He said, well, the guy used to work for us is managing ?
money for an Israeli family. So me and John went to see them, ran across ?
Greg Pinola from, uh, Fairfield. And he said, Ken, how you doing? I said, ?
man, I need a deal. He said, you know, you were very fair to us when we ?
got in trouble. How can I help you? And I said, man, I really need a ?
deal. He said, I'll tell you what, uh, call so and so, they let me have ?
last look.?

Ken Bacon (01:52:57) - They didn't, they didn't, uh, abrogate their ?
fiduciary duty, but they, they said, here's this deal. We're gonna tell ?
you about it in advance, and we're gonna tell you what the final bid is. ?
And if you can meet that right, you got a deal. Right. Uh, trying to be ?
one of the best deals we did. Uh, John for Carro, who was running the ?
film for Counter Fitzgerald, uh, again, we got a deal. We got a, uh, a ?
off market deal. So some of the relationships helped me with money. They ?
helped me with deals. It wasn't easy. Um, but that's how we started ?
getting family office money. So we did a little bit 20 17, 20 18, through ?
the relationships that John had, we found another family out in ?
California. Uh, we took over their portfolio. And so, and we get to 2021. ?
We did 400 million in deals. We sold 200 million.?

Ken Bacon (01:53:56) - We bought 200 million. Mm-hmm. . We then got, uh, ?
Citibank after George Floyd, uh, wanted to do more business with some, ?
uh, uh, uh, you know, black asset managers. They put out a rfp, 60 people ?
applied. We were one of the five that got it, got 40 million, would've ?
liked more. But, you know, we've put out most of that money, uh, formed a ?
relationship with Groner Capital Management. So, uh, I, I'd say that we ?
still have a problem. We don't call ourselves an emerging manager. We ?
don't like to say we're a minority owned firm. Cause when you do, uh, ?
they make you kind of come in the back door and they want to talk about ?
impact investment in the e ESG and affordable, and you get the small ?
dollars. And I'm too old to play that game. I don't, I mean, I'll do it ?
because to my advantage, but we like to view ourselves as a boutique firm ?
with an institutional background. And that's how we like to compete. And ?
Artemis, we didn't do a deal with Artemis from 2015 all the way up to ?
?2022. But then at the end of 2022, we did two preferred deals, preferred ?
deals with them.?

John Coe (01:55:05) - Good.?

Ken Bacon (01:55:06) - And so, uh, yes, relationships matter.?

John Coe (01:55:10) - Absolutely.?

Ken Bacon (01:55:11) - They matter.?

John Coe (01:55:13) - So looking at your portfolio, you have only one ?
asset in the Washington DC S M S A, if I'm, unless I'm mistaken in ?
Frederick.?

Ken Bacon (01:55:20) - Yes.?

John Coe (01:55:21) - Uh, in general, is your focus, it seems, is in ?
secondary and tertiary markets. So talk about your acquisition strategy a ?
little bit.?

Ken Bacon (01:55:30) - Yeah, it, it, it's not really, our markets are ?
like, uh, Austin, San Antonio.?

John Coe (01:55:35) - Okay. Well, that's a private Dallas

Ken Bacon (01:55:36) - Fort Worth. Yeah. And then, uh, we've got stuff in ?
Richmond, Raleigh, Durham, uh, so you know Carolinas mm-hmm. , uh, ?
Virginia in Norfolk. Uh, uh, yeah. So we do have some deals, some ?
affordable deals in the tertiary markets. Mm-hmm. , well, one thing I ?
learned in Fannie Mae, I used to hear people say, we do deals in good ?
markets. And people didn't define it. So we sat up in divine, uh, divides ?
and algorithm, looked at nine different variables to, uh, help us choose ?
markets. And that's how we ended up in San Antonio. In Richmond, if you ?
went to 20 13, 20 14 and asked the biggest players in Texas where they ?
would invest, they'd all say Houston, Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth. They ?
didn't do San Antonio. We looked at job creation, demographics, ?
everything. We love San Antonio. People weren't there. We got in, in 20 ?
?14, 20 15 when we exited, all of a sudden the big funds were there.?

Ken Bacon (01:56:33) - Mm-hmm. , they discovered it. Uh, Richmond, ?
Goldilocks Market, you don't think of Richmond. I call it Goldilocks. ?
Richmond never grows too fast, but never goes down too bad. We got deals ?
around Richmond. Again, there weren't a lot of outside people, but when ?
we got ready, everybody wants to be in Richmond now. Uh, so that was a ?
discipline. We, in fact, cbr e and Houston still uses it. They call it ?
cbr e uh, rail Field, uh, uh, index. I think they're still using some. ?
And now that I'm chair of wellow, well, tower has PhDs of data science, ?
so they're much more sophisticated. But we chose markets based on certain ?
metrics. And, uh, the reason we are not in this market, DC has a lot of ?
favorable things. We had, we had a deal in PG County, but one, the ?
dollars here are much higher. Mm-hmm. .?

Ken Bacon (01:57:25) - And quite frankly, this is one of my friends. Boy, ?
you sound so much like the regulatory environment here, uh, dc uh, the ?
Tofa process. Oh, uh, uh, I, I, I, I, I didn't like that. And then, um, ?
the other thing that happened when Covid hit and they had the eviction ?
moratoriums, I got why they did it. Okay. Stimulus is money is out, guys. ?
Okay. You can lift that. They didn't, and the horror stories, I'm sure ?
you heard 'em. Oh, yeah. That, and, and there were people taking ?
advantage of that mm-hmm. . And then, you know, you started hearing about ?
rent control. And look, I lived in New York City. I used to, one of my ?
bosses from Kera, Marvin, Marcus ran the rent stabilization board there ?
for years. I do not like that. And the reason I don't like it, I know how ?
that story ends.?

Ken Bacon (01:58:21) - Mm-hmm. . And, uh, it's very hard. Like we pride ?
ourselves on that. We build communities. But to do that, you gotta be ?
able to invest. And you also have to be able to manage your tenant base. ?
If I see somebody dealing drugs, I want 'em out. I don't wanna have to ?
argue with somebody about it. And by the way, you've heard the stories, ?
and it's true that when they did the eviction moratorium, it was to, to ?
protect good people. But now bad people, and I've heard time and time ?
again, I won't mention names about the drug dealer, about the dead beat. ?
You can't get rid of it. Mm-hmm. . And all it takes is one dead beat, one ?
drug dealer. And I can bring down a whole complex. Yep. And the thing ?
that that concerns me about rent control is it makes it hard to do the ?
investments.?

Ken Bacon (01:59:12) - I have never, we have never ripped off a tenant. ?
We've never done that. But, uh, you know, that you have to charge, you ?
know, as a fiduciary what the market will allow you to charge, but you ?
also have to be able to recoup your cost. Mm-hmm. . And, uh, the classic ?
example of me is, one, when I heard about a lot of these rent control ?
things is insurance. I don't control the cost of insurance. I don't ?
control the cost of labor. Those are going up by double digit. And ?
everything east of I 95 is gonna get hit with more and more insurance ?
increases. So we like being in places. Look, we do workforce housing ?
broadly defined. We can't charge what people can't afford. But at the ?
same time, we have to, as, uh, a fiduciary, have a fiduciary ?
responsibility to investors. And I just get very nervous when I get into ?
a situation where, uh, my cost can outpace the growth of revenue. So

John Coe (02:00:16) - I get it. So you avoid markets today.?

Ken Bacon (02:00:19) - That's why I'm not in New York. That's why I'm not ?
in California. Those are good markets. But that calls for a skill set. Do ?
I have it? Yeah, I got it. But do I want to, to do that? Because I think ?
that's, we're a small shop and it, it's just too much brain surgery to do ?
that.?

John Coe (02:00:37) - Got it. So I recently interviewed Catherine Buell ?
mm-hmm. , who recently stepped down after leading Amazon's housing equity ?
fund, who committed 2 billion in equity towards workforce housing. Mm-?
hmm.  and affordable housing. Are you familiar with their program? And ?
have you investigated it with any of your perspective investments? Mm-?
hmm.  as it seems to align with your strategy to some extent.?

Ken Bacon (02:00:57) - Yeah. Uh, you know, Brian Kenner, who's on the ?
investment committee for that, uh, uh, used to work for me at Fannie. I ?
met with them. I talked, we looked at it, but again, it is tied to this ?
area. I think they had also looked at other areas like Nashville and ?
Seattle. Right. Uh, Seattle's not one I want to be in. Nashville is a ?
market I like, but Nashville is overpriced right now. It, it, it, it, ?
it's, Nashville is like Austin. And, uh, my experience, again, I'm old ?
school. When a market gets that hot, there's going to be a correction. ?
Now, Sunbelt markets from a regulatory perspective, are easier to do ?
business with, but the flip side of that is it's easier to build. Yeah. ?
So you've gotta watch it. And so, uh, you know, I believe in positive ?
leverage. And so, uh, , when I see my cap rate on top of my debt rate, ?
that means I'm betting that I'm gonna get a lot of rent increases. And I ?
don't like doing that debt. I'm, I'm, I'm too conservative for that. And, ?
and like I said, the DC area, not only did we have the little cap rates, ?
I had a a, a management process that was much more intensive and much ?
more complicated. And so the Amazon thing was helpful, and there were ?
people like j Jair Lynch who've done very well. But also, we're not a ?
developer. We're not a developer. And, uh,?

John Coe (02:02:20) - Why are you not a developer??

Ken Bacon (02:02:22) - It's not my skillset. Uh, okay. The three things. ?
One, it's not something that I've done.?

John Coe (02:02:28) - Okay.?

Ken Bacon (02:02:29) - We could hire somebody, uh, the risk reward ?
profile. I, you know, you'd probably make more money doing it. But, um, ?
I'm conservative and I just don't, I, I don't like the process of ?
developing. And the third thing is, I think if I were 20 years younger, , ?
but, you know, I'm at the stage in life where, you know, you get, when ?
you get older, and I don't know if anybody's told you this, you have what ?
you call your Gogo your logo and your NoGo

John Coe (02:03:00) - . Right.?

Ken Bacon (02:03:02) - And so I like that. I'm still, I still have a ?
little bit of go-go in me, but, you know, I'll be 69 in October. The slow ?
years are ahead. And when you develop, uh, you're gonna invest a hell of ?
a lot of time emotion in a project that's gonna take years to bear fruit. ?
Mm-hmm. . And, uh, I'm just not at a stage in life where I want to do it. ?
Uh, I've talked to people about partnering on development, uh, where I ?
said, look, you go through the entitlement process and once you got that, ?
hey, we'll help arrange your construction financing, we'll arrange your ?
permit financing take out, we can do that. I know how to do that very ?
well. But I don't, I I, I don't want to be the guy down at city hall at ?
the zoning meetings. I, I don't want to do that. Particularly in the West ?
coast, the East coast. I don't wanna do that. . It's, it's too much brain ?
search.?

John Coe (02:03:58) - So you've seen it from the, uh, lending Ivory ?
Tower, and you've seen what your, your clients were Right. Going through. ?
That's right. That's

Ken Bacon (02:04:04) - Right. Yeah. I remember talking to Tom Bazuto once ?
about stuff, and, and you know, I live in Cleveland Park when they did ?
cathedral companies. Yes. When I moved here in 1999, that was supposed to ?
happen. Oh, I know. And I, and some of my neighbors fought it. Oh, we ?
don't want

John Coe (02:04:19) - Them. I worked for the Saul Company. Oh, okay.?

Ken Bacon (02:04:21) - The

John Coe (02:04:22) - Saul Company sold that property Yeah. To Giant ?
Food. Yeah. In 1991.?

Ken Bacon (02:04:28) - Yes.?

John Coe (02:04:28) - And that was to save the Saul Company at the time, ?
as you, you were leaving the rtc Yeah. Frank Saul was three days away ?
from losing Chevy Chase bank to the rtc. Yeah. You may have known that at ?
the time. Uh, that property along with flagship, uh, center up on ?
Rockville Pike, that's now owned by Eden's was, or actually it's now ?
Federal Owns It was those two set properties. Sales saved the company. ?
Yeah.?

Ken Bacon (02:04:57) - And now, and then, and then these people in my ?
neighborhood, Cleveland Park tried to say that, uh, uh, oh, that was an ?
architecturally significant building. Is this a brick rectangle? Oh,?

John Coe (02:05:08) - Yeah.?

Ken Bacon (02:05:08) - But they fought it for, for, you know, a decade, ?
you know, and so that's the thing. Now, again, developer came along, but, ?
uh, like I said, that was developing in some places was just too painful. ?
And so I just, like I said, I don't wanna do that.?

John Coe (02:05:25) - Yeah. Well, um, it's interesting. I mean, you know, ?
somebody like Catherine's much younger. Yeah. And she had a social ?
mission thing that was really important. She lives in Anacostia. She has ?
a whole feeling about that. Yeah. Which is interesting.?

Ken Bacon (02:05:38) - And by the way, I'm the chair of Martha's table, ?
so, you know, I'm in the area I wanted, I wanted to develop. But there's ?
one thing when you're doing it, like on one side of the table versus ?
being the other side of the table mm-hmm. ,?

John Coe (02:05:50) - You get it. Um, historically affordable housing's ?
been addressed by government financing and, and hud do you see other ?
private companies like Amazon stepping up to affordable housing ?
challenges? Do you see this as a trend??

Ken Bacon (02:06:06) - I would hope it would become a trend. And I'll ?
tell you why. Uh, and now I wanna get into, uh, philosophy.?

John Coe (02:06:13) - Good.?

Ken Bacon (02:06:14) - I think the thing that has made this country great ?
and kind of unique in the western world is that the American pop, uh, ?
public has generally been supportive of business and the American dream. ?
And I think a lot of the polarization in the country has happened because ?
people feel the dream was no longer attainable. And one aspect of the ?
dream is no longer attainable, is owning a house. You know, I mentioned ?
my, my, my grandparents. Okay, here's my father's parents cook and a ?
chauffeur. But my grandfather died. He owned, not one, not two, but three ?
houses a house. They lived in a duplex or two rental properties. And when ?
we moved my grandmother later on, she was 95. And we had to move her from ?
the Chicago area, she and her sister to Houston. Cause it was too hard ?
having all these elder people scared her. When I looked in one of her ?
drawers, we were packing up her house. She had a copy of every mortgage ?
payment they had made on that house. She kept it. And her sister, my ?
granddad Alice, owned her home. Uh, my mother's mother. Now, my, my ?
mother's house, they caught that a shotgun house, but she owned it.?

Ken Bacon (02:07:31) - And so these people were doing manual labor and ?
they owned property. And that affects how people view the country and ?
view everything. And when that becomes not attainable. So when I look at, ?
my son and his wife both work for Facebook and they can't buy a house in ?
the Bay Area. Now they ended up buying a house, a country house, and they ?
rent in the city. So they own a home. And even then I had to help. That's ?
ridiculous that, uh, we've created a generation that can't own a home. ?
Now, some people say, oh, Americans overemphasize homeowner, but that's ?
part of being America. So I think it's in the interest of these big ?
corporations to not only put their dollars to help, which helps their ?
employees, it helps the country, but it also puts the pressure on the ?
cities who have created, uh, a regulatory morass that makes it hard. So I ?
get very upset when I hear the people, oh, we've gotta make all these ?
mandates for the developers. When I say, well, you know what, if you ?
change your policies, maybe you wouldn't have to have so many mandates. ?
You know, uh, and maybe it's funny you said, easier for the developing ?
community to enact a mandates if you made it simple. But if it takes me ?
three years to get entitlement, I can't afford to do it

John Coe (02:08:52) - For him. So Mayor Bowser steps up and talks about, ?
you know, converting downtown office buildings to residential. Yeah. But ?
the same time people raise, how about raising the height limit in ?
Washington DC Yeah. Which would then free up land value and would create ?
a lot of tax revenue for the city. Yeah. That's one thing. And then the ?
other one you mentioned earlier, TOPA. Yeah. If they remove the topa ?
register and rent control in the District of Columbia, yeah. You could ?
open up tremendous opportunity for investment to improve housing and ?
offer incentives for affordable housing with density and keep going with ?
it. Why not

Ken Bacon (02:09:36) - Topa sounds good on paper. How many tenants groups ?
have you actually seen do deals successfully? What it does do is it ?
creates impediment that draws out the process. It discourages outsiders ?
from coming to the market. Uh, and it adds to the cost. I've seen it, ?
I've seen how people play the game. And, uh,?

John Coe (02:09:58) - Law firms have actually built practices around the ?
business that, that yeah. That legislation. And

Ken Bacon (02:10:03) - When Todd Lee, who used to work for me, was ?
running DC housing, there was a situation I was interested in looking in. ?
And Todd warned me away from it cuz he says, Ken, you won't believe in ?
politics. What's happening with this tenants group? And it's not gonna be ?
good. You know, so it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it's an impediment. And I ?
keep, I tell you the side, I keep looking at where the Lord and Taylor is ?
in Friendship Heights. Mm-hmm. , and that should be affordable housing. ?
Mm-hmm. , it's by a metro station. Yep. It's a big piece of land. Will it ?
happen? I don't know. So I, I I think people have to look incentives of ?
nice. But if you look at the regulatory process, when I look at the land ?
over by Howard, you know, how long that's taken to get developed. And I ?
don't think a lot of policy makers realize that when you create, I mean, ?
look, you want community input, you want that. I get it. But I don't know ?
if a lot of people realize that the longer and the more complex you make ?
the process that I have to hire lobbyists and lawyers, that what that ?
does to discourage the production of housing.?

John Coe (02:11:11) - Well, there's certain people that wanna stay ?
employed.?

Ken Bacon (02:11:14) - Yeah. , I got this.?

John Coe (02:11:16) - So Yeah. The attorneys, this is a town of ?
attorneys. Yes. Yeah. And attorneys will feed each other. Right.?

Ken Bacon (02:11:24) - Yeah.?

John Coe (02:11:24) - I hate to say it, but, well,?

Ken Bacon (02:11:26) - I can say, and it's well-intentioned

John Coe (02:11:27) - Legal infrastructure in this city is, is on ?
purpose, frankly.?

Ken Bacon (02:11:31) - Yeah. I'm not saying it's for the intention, but ?
I'm just saying, I don't think people realize that there's a reason that, ?
uh, and by the way, it's not that Texas doesn't have an affordable ?
housing crisis, but there's a reason that businesses and everything flock ?
to these markets because it's just easier to do business. And because ?
it's easier to do business, you know, you get growth, which helps your ?
tax base mm-hmm. . Uh, but when you start adding the taxes,?

John Coe (02:12:00) - Virtual positive cycle

Ken Bacon (02:12:01) - That's right. It, it, it creates distancing.?

John Coe (02:12:04) - Yeah. So, uh, shifting to your personal board ?
experiences, how did you learn, earn the opportunities you've been given ?
mm-hmm.  in participating in corporate boards as a smart and bold black ?
leader with your educational credentials, you stand out clearly mm-hmm. , ?
and perhaps in an earlier era might quote, fill the quota mm-hmm. , um, ?
of either a woman or a minority. Talk about how you've seen that change ?
over the years into a person, the person you are, instead of your ?
ethnicity or gender.?

Ken Bacon (02:12:35) - You know, I'd say that the board, there was one ?
board where that was probably a fact when I was Comcast, but even Comcast ?
was a result of relationships. Mm-hmm. , when I moved to Philly for ?
Fannie Mae, my predecessor and my successor didn't live in the city. I ?
was the only person that ever ran that office who lived in the city. I ?
got involved in civic affairs mm-hmm. , I met a lot of Comcast executives ?
and the current CEO and chairman of Comcast. Uh, our kids went to the ?
same school. Uh, we lived in the same area. I'd see him at soccer games, ?
and I'd always talk about the business, and I'd always ask questions ?
about the business. And I think he was amazed that I knew so much. But ?
Comcast was the biggest thing in Philly. And like, I, I, I think you ?
probably learned, I'm, I'm a voracious reader of magazines of those ?
pictures.?

Ken Bacon (02:13:26) - And so I knew a lot about the company. And when I ?
found something interesting, I dig deeper. So, uh, I left Philadelphia. ?
I'm here. I get a call one day and someone says, would you be interested ?
to being on the board of Comcast? So I go up and what had happened, ?
Comcast was really interested in Frank Rains. Brian wanted diversity on ?
his board, but Brian didn't want to just check the box. He wanted ?
diversity of prospectus, but he wanted like business perspectives. And ?
someone put up my name. And so they called me and I went in and, you ?
know, I hadn't been in the cable business, but I read up everything. And ?
Ralph Roberts, Brian's father was still chairman then. And I remember he ?
remarked, you asked some good questions, and I remember telling him, and ?
the conversation was going great. And I said, well, guys, look, I gotta ?
tell you something.?

Ken Bacon (02:14:19) - What? I said, well, you know, you know, I'm not ?
the ceo. I said, yeah. I said, but at that time, multi-family, I wasn't ?
even an executive vice president. And they said, we thought you had a big ?
job. I said, I run a hundred billion dollar portfolio . And Brian Roberts ?
laughed and said, that's big enough for me, . So I went on that board. It ?
was intimidating at first because they were all these CEOs, but it just ?
made me work harder. It was like, you know, I told you I'm competitive ?
intellectually. And, uh, I even served as lead director for a while, and ?
now I'm head of the, uh, uh, non-gov committee. So that's how I got that ?
board. So yeah, diversity did play an element, but it was also if people ?
knew me, they knew my mindset. Uh, and so, uh, Brian, uh, made it happen.?

Ken Bacon (02:15:12) - But my other boards all came from business ?
relationships, forest City. I had done business there. Uh, I ended up on ?
the board of Benal Kennedy, a Canadian company, because one of the guys ?
there, uh, had been on the board of one of my borrowers. Uh, and, you ?
know, all these other boards were like, it was because of my real estate ?
expertise mm-hmm.  my mortgage expertise. And so, uh, I was kind of a ?
great candidate because I had this background Sure. And they could check ?
the diversity box mm-hmm. . So, so it's all always, uh, and it's changed. ?
Look after George Floyd, everybody wanted it. One of the myths out there ?
though, was that there weren't qualified people. And in today's world, ?
I've been stunned at how many that you just don't hear about it as much. ?
But the number of young black and Latino and women and Asian executives, ?
you know, everybody wants to talk about what's wrong with the country all ?
the time.?

Ken Bacon (02:16:16) - You know, for politicians it's useful, you know, ?
and, uh, it's how they get elected. Yeah. So, you know, whether it's, ?
they're not enough blank, fill in the blank, whatever group you are, ?
they're not enough of us, or they're too many, you know, and, and it is ?
the looting meritocracy. Right. Well, the fact is there are a lot. Do we ?
need more? Yes. But the country is made. That's the beauty of America to ?
me. Like I say that my father could be born on a plantation and then a ?
Professor Bill that I could go to segregated schools for the first 11 ?
years of my life and end up being chairman of a publicly traded company. ?
Oh, there's a need for more progress. But it's happening. And I think ?
there needs to be a more positive outlook in the country and ask ?
ourselves how we can keep making progress, uh, rather than people trying ?
to turn back the clock or else deny the progress that's been making.?

John Coe (02:17:17) - Well, one of the reasons I do this podcast is I ?
like to find out people's roots and understand where they came from and ?
what drives them. And the whole reason I go into this much depth mm-hmm. ?
?, instead of just being talking about business and all that mm-hmm. , is ?
to understand what drives somebody's success. And listening to you ?
fascinates me. Because if it weren't for your parents Yeah. It weren't ?
for your heritage mm-hmm.  and what you learn growing up, you wouldn't be ?
where you are today. Yeah.?

Ken Bacon (02:17:48) - Oh, no, no doubt about it.?

John Coe (02:17:50) - I mean, if you grew up in the inner city somewhere ?
that Yeah. And, you know, just had a whole different framework. Yeah. And ?
to me, that's where we need to change. We need to change right down to, ?
you know, when you have a child, it's really important for them to get ?
the best experience they possibly can in life. To me, that's, what do you ?
think about that? Oh,?

Ken Bacon (02:18:11) - Yeah. Well, you know, one of the things, I ?
remember when my son was, uh, when he came here, he was a Saint Albans, ?
and he was once trying to articulate something. And when I finally ?
figured out, he was saying, my son, like me at that age was  had two left ?
feet. He was not good at athletics. And yet he was making honor roll, ?
equivalent honor roll at St. Albans. And he was talking about how people ?
reacted to him. Right. By the way, St. Albans was a great place, it was a ?
great experience. But he said sometimes he could see how some kids, and ?
what, what I realized, some kids had trouble sometimes reacting to a ?
black man who might be smarter than them. Right. And by the way, no ugly ?
incidents. I don't wanna give that thing, but just, he describes some ?
awkward moments.?

Ken Bacon (02:19:02) - And I remember telling him, I said, son, that you ?
have to remember that we're all captives to what we see. And a lot of ?
times I said, when you see a black man on television, they're holding a ?
microphone, or they have a ball in their hands. They don't present images ?
of us as executives, as intellectuals. And so, don't be surprised ?
sometimes when people first meet you, if they have a, oh wow, you're so ?
articulate. Mm-hmm.  wow. You're, don't be surprised at that. And don't ?
get upset at that. Don't, don't call them racist, don't call 'em ?
anything, because a lot of times that's not how we are presented. Right. ?
Right. And, you know, and, and he, he got that. And so, one of the things ?
I think is important, this is the good thing about your, your, your ?
podcast for people to see Herman, to see Catherine to see me.?

Ken Bacon (02:20:00) - And that, that it can happen. And one of the, the, ?
the things that I think ending segregation had to happen, but one of the ?
things I see, uh, at Martha's table is now I live in Cleveland Park. So ?
my kids grew up in a very integrated world. My kids didn't grow up around ?
poverty. They didn't grow up around drugs and stuff. I had to deal with ?
that, but that also meant that those people in my neighborhood saw my ?
dad. You know, they knew me. You know, so like when I go back to Houston, ?
there are people, uh, I grew up with who didn't make it, but they, they ?
saw me make it, right? Mm-hmm. , and they can, you know, I can meet their ?
kids. As we've become stratified along class lines, uh, that's something ?
that concerns me. That, uh, and by the way, it's not just poor black ?
kids.?

Ken Bacon (02:20:55) - I even worry about rural America when I see what's ?
happening in some parts of the south. And, uh, communities of the ?
Midwest, again, that's the polarization because people don't see success. ?
People like them, whether it is, you know, like I'm white working class ?
kid in Akron, Ohio. Right. You know, who do I see the big companies have ?
left? So that's when I see the anti-elitism that I see in the Republican ?
party today, which I always find ironic that you have Donald Trump who ?
went to Penn, his kids went to Penn, Ron DeSantis, Harvard and Yale. I ?
mean, I, I find it like that's ridiculous for these guys at Rail against ?
elites when they're elites. But one of the reasons so many people buy ?
that is they don't see people like themselves succeeding. And that's a, ?
that's a problem. Income mobility here is becoming less. And, and that's ?
why I think it's important for people not only to have role models, but ?
to hear stories that, you know, I can make this happen.?

John Coe (02:22:00) - A mutual friend of ours in recent podcast, ?
interviewee Herman Bulls, we've talked about, referred to two pandemics ?
Covid, 19 mm-hmm. , which is mostly past mm-hmm.  us now. However, as of ?
the lasting impact on the commercial real estate sector mm-hmm. , the ?
other being the social pandemic driven by the divisiveness today. Mm-hmm. ?
?, including racial and gender con configurations, George Floyd, me too. ?
Mm-hmm. , how will the US come together to resolve these issues? Will it ?
just take time for the millennials and Gen Z generations to acce the ?
leadership with different attitudes? Mm-hmm. ,?

Ken Bacon (02:22:39) - I think it's hard. Uh, sometimes it can be too ?
much freedom. And by that, uh, I think in today's world, people can say ?
outrageous things and not be held accountable. People can spread lies and ?
not be held accountable. Uh, and that hurts. I am more optimistic when I ?
look at my kids. Uh, I had a, uh, every year my wife and I host a ?
reception for people who've been admitted to Stanford. Uh, and this year, ?
uh, was a young black lady of parents or African immigrants. So one thing ?
that's changed is a, a, a significant chunk of the students are now, uh, ?
children of immigrants. Uh, and one young lady asked me about, what was ?
it like relations like at Stanford? And I said, well, you know, when I ?
went and my brother went, most of our friends were black. I said, there ?
was some self-segregation.?

Ken Bacon (02:23:45) - And I said about what happened when my daughter ?
was at Stanford. So my daughter was talking about one of her friends. And ?
I said, Kimberly, what is she? Oh daddy, she's a sociology major. I said, ?
no, no, no, no. What is she? He said, what do you mean, daddy? I said, ?
where is she from? Oh daddy, she's from Arcadia camp. I said, no, no, no, ?
no, no. I said, Kimberly, what is her ethnicity? She said, oh, daddy, ?
she's Chinese. My kids, if I ask them about their friends, that is not ?
the first thing. And my kids, uh, we now have in my family, I have, you ?
know, gay nieces right. In the family. That was hard. I remember when one ?
of my nieces came out, uh, and I found out by accident. I said, why ?
didn't you tell me? And she talked about things she had heard people and ?
family say.?

Ken Bacon (02:24:37) - And I said, you know what, you know, we're an ?
older generation. We didn't know better. I said, but you know, I love ?
you. You're my niece, your grandfather. I said, all these people love ?
you. And now that's gone. You know? And so I see hope in the younger ?
generations, but we do have a political system where it's easier to ?
organize people around hate, around anger, about, about feeling unjust. ?
So whether that's someone on the left railing against the big ?
corporations, or someone on the right railing against immigration. And ?
when I look at, when you go to the hospital, where do your nurses come ?
from? Where do the doctors come from? You go to the restaurants. So when ?
I hear about inflation, one of the things I'm surprised somebody hadn't ?
said, you know, why we've got some inflation. We're not letting enough ?
people migrate to the country. Mm-hmm. . Right. If you don't have people ?
migrating, don't complain. When wages start going up, I mean, we needed ?
wages to go up, but one reason, there's a difference between I'm paying ?
you because you're creating value. And another thing I'm just paying you. ?
Cause I can't find anybody to do it. Well, you know,?

John Coe (02:25:52) - Unemployment's at all time long. Yeah.?

Ken Bacon (02:25:54) - I've never known anybody. I always like to say, ?
I've never known anybody to migrate to this country to sit on their ass ?
and come over here. I'm come America to get welfare. I come to this ?
country to work. Whether I'm coming from Africa, Venezuela, Cuba, I come ?
here to work. That's what made this country great. So I'm in favor of not ?
chaotic immigration, but I think it's ridiculous that if an engineer from ?
India wants to come here and we don't have enough engineers or a nurse ?
from the Philippines, or even somebody coming from Guatemala who says, ?
I'll come here and cut the grass and pick strawberries. Give me a job. ?
And I don't see anybody in this country, black, white, we in a yellow ?
lined up to do that work, let 'em in.?

John Coe (02:26:39) - I can't argue with that. Perhaps the sector of real ?
estate most impacted by Covid has been the office market, particularly in ?
major city, uh, CBDs. Mm-hmm. , I know your focus is multi-family. Mm-?
hmm. , however, the ripple effects of the office market decline will have ?
impact on multi-family properties in several ways. How do you see this ?
impact??

Ken Bacon (02:27:02) - I see the impact because, you know, for a while it ?
was smart growth 24 7 living. Yep. And if you don't have the business ?
activity that supports the restaurants, it's, it's a vicious circle. So, ?
uh, when you go into downtown DC at night, uh, and there aren't the ?
restaurants open, why would I want to live there? Right. So I think, ?
again, to resolve this, the office market is gonna be what the office ?
market is. I don't know how you fix that, but I think one of the things ?
that cities could do, and the large, uh, uh, uh, people own real estate, ?
they need to do everything they can to encourage the formation of ?
businesses in these central business districts, the restaurants and ?
everything. And that is by tax breaks, uh, by, uh, security. Um,?

John Coe (02:28:07) - How about getting the federal government to come ?
back to work? Yeah.?

Ken Bacon (02:28:10) - The federal go. I mean, in, in our case, DC ?
definitely getting to come back, but it's the federal government having ?
people come back to work. But why don't a lot of people want to come back ?
to work? They're worried about crying. Uh, they're worried about, uh, the ?
cost of it. Parking. How am I gonna get to work? How much it costs to eat ?
lunch? You know, a city that has done, and again, it's their form of ?
government. Years ago, one of my brother-in-laws who worked for Exxon was ?
stationed in Singapore. And the Singapore government fostered the ?
creation of what they call haka, I think they call it haka markets in all ?
of these built apartment buildings. They built where they'd have all ?
these food stalls where they had very low rent. And they did that because ?
they said, we want women to enter the workforce.?

Ken Bacon (02:28:59) - We want to make it easy for people to be able to ?
get a cheap meal. So we're gonna give, encourage the formation of all ?
these small, little tiny restaurants. And it was an exam and it worked. ?
And as an example of me, like I'd love to see not, you know, look, I love ?
Jose Andreas, but I'd love to see DC do something where in some of the ?
big office, uh, uh, owners get together to say, you know what? We're ?
gonna set up some more, uh, food courts and stuff where we're gonna make ?
it cheap and we'll have security there, and we'll tell the parking garage ?
free parking at night. Encourage people to come back. And when you do ?
that, then you might find more people, Hey, I want to go down here and ?
work because they had all these hit places to go after I work and go to ?
lunch. So, you know, it's gonna, cause we gotta shatter the traditional ?
way of thinking. But it, it, it's, it's a problem because it affects tax, ?
but it, it affects where the people want to live.?

John Coe (02:29:59) - So you're, you're meeting regularly with corporate ?
leaders. Talk about the pervasive influence of esg, particularly the ?
commercial real estate sector. Will the future of the industry and ?
success be, be tied more to performance rated with ESG metrics than ?
financial metrics? And how do you see those incentives being allocated??

Ken Bacon (02:30:19) - There are two dimensions to esg. There's the one ?
like, oh boy, I gotta do it cause the SCC or some group is asking me to ?
do it. Then there's the, you know what, this makes sense. What makes ?
sense is you gotta look at energy costs. What makes sense is climate ?
change is real. Are you ready to deal with it? And by that, I'm not ?
talking about oh, how much you pollute, but like, you know, flooding, ?
look what happened at Fort Lauderdale last week. Right. You know, that's ?
real, uh, that affects your insurance costs

John Coe (02:31:00) - Insurance. Yeah.?

Ken Bacon (02:31:01) - So, you know, there's dealing with climate change ?
and there's dealing with the fact that when I hear people like, oh, they ?
roll their eyes about the, uh, people aspect, uh, you know, having the ?
LGBTQ community that ain't going away. Having people that look like me, ?
you know, this country like it or not, isn't become more diverse. And if ?
those group, any group is shut out, that threatens the future of the ?
system. Because when people don't have an interest in the system, they're ?
not gonna support it. Right. So I think business is doing the right thing ?
by people doing the right thing by the environment is in critical to ?
their long term success. But there are aspects of it that are pain. You ?
know, the stuff that came in front of the SCC 500 pages. There's a lot of ?
stuff you look at and you say, oh my goodness, why do I have to do this??

Ken Bacon (02:32:00) - It's not adding value to anybody. So I think that ?
the basic thrust of esg, people could talk about companies being woke, ?
but like, if you are not, uh, and by the way, they can never define it. ?
But if you have a company where black and brown people of color don't ?
feel comfortable with you, you ain't gonna make it. Right. That's too big ?
a chunk of the population. Right. You know, I want to take what the quote ?
they that my, they attributed to Michael Jordan, which got kind of taken ?
outta context where he said Republicans buy shoes too. Well, uh, guess ?
what drives trends in this country? What you see black kids doing in Los ?
Angeles, what you see Puerto Rican kids doing in New York in terms of ?
fashion, in terms of music is gonna be, your kids are gonna be doing it ?
in the next few years.?

Ken Bacon (02:32:54) - Mm-hmm. . And why not incorporate that? So if you ?
are a business, so that's, that's the part of ESG to me being aware mm-?
hmm.  is good. Mm-hmm. , where it breaks down though, is sometimes is ?
some of the things that go along with it are like, you're gonna roll your ?
eyes and say it's a pain. Um, but you know that that's the world we live ?
in. But I think rather than fight the concept, we need to spend more time ?
talking about here's the way to implement it in the man of this business. ?
Friendly. Mm-hmm. .?

John Coe (02:33:30) - So going to personal issues, what are your biggest ?
wins, losses, and most surprising events in your career? Okay.?

Ken Bacon (02:33:38) - I'd say the biggest wins have been, uh, one of the ?
RTC and Fannie Mae that, uh, my support of diverse businesses. Mm-hmm. , ?
uh, you know, it's not a major thing, but you know, in life when there ?
are problems, you always like to be able to look in the mirror and say, ?
what should I do? And, you know, I help whether it's the RTC helping some ?
black owned and women owned and Latino owned investment banks, get a toe ?
hold outside of municipal finance. I'm proud of that. Uh, I'm proud of, ?
uh, what I was able to do, uh, in the dust program mm-hmm. . And then I'm ?
very, very proud of what I've been able to do with people. Like I said, ?
when I go places, someone wants a joke. Did everybody work for you? ? Uh, ?
the head of t I craft the sa Duckett used to work in Fannie Mae Uhhuh .?

Ken Bacon (02:34:36) - And I'm at a conference and I go up and there's ?
all these people around and she said what an inspiration I was when she ?
was at Fannie Mae, when she saw people like me, you know, in leadership ?
positions. So when I can say that I've inspired, whether it is directly ?
or indirectly, uh, someone, I'm very proud of that. And I'm also very ?
proud that, uh, a story I like to tell about multifamily is when my ?
wife's, one of my wife's grandmothers died, Ms. Mutton died. And I went ?
back to Houston for the funeral and I was going to the church and I said, ?
this was a Catholic church that the Creole families built our Mother ?
Mercy. And I hadn't been there in decades. And I'm driving through the ?
neighborhood I passed by where my grandmother's house used to be, and ?
it's torn down. It was now a drive in Chase Bank and I'm driving down the ?
street and all these houses that once had the fig trees were brightly ?
painted, they're now dusty and torn down lad the neighborhood was just ?
been devastated.?

Ken Bacon (02:35:41) - And all of a sudden I see this sign construction ?
site, seniors housing being built by Mount Bethel Baptist Church ?
financing. It was Fannie Mae tax credits. It was one of my dust lenders. ?
And it was the only bright new thing in that neighborhood. Mm-hmm. . Now, ?
I didn't know about the particular deal, but the fact that a product that ?
I had did that mm-hmm. . And now when I go into Anacostia and I see the ?
stuff that Charles Smith, that, that Smith, uh, WC Smith. Chris Smith, ?
yeah. WC Smith has developed. When I see the stuff that Todd Lee used to ?
work for me in DC housing was a great loss. But I see the projects that ?
his agency sponsor, when I see, uh, stuff that red brick, this ?
development company, Louie Dubin. Louie Dubin used to work for me at the ?
rtc. What he's done and the stories he's told me about how he did it, I ?
can't tell you. That's why one of the things about real estate, I can see ?
what tangible I've done. I can see the tangible stuff. And so that's the ?
stuff I'm most proud of in my professionally.?

John Coe (02:36:56) - And what about losses??

Ken Bacon (02:36:59) - Losses? Um, I hate, uh, I wasn't directly ?
responsible, but I hate what happened to Fannie Mae. Right. Because it ?
wasn't just the loss of my money or the loss of the company. It was the ?
loss. It was the fact that unfairly that affordable housing for a long ?
time people blamed on affordable housing. And I'd always tell people it ?
wasn't affordable housing that did it. It was no dock loans with no down ?
payments, low down payments that did it. But it got labeled as ?
affordable. And so people stopped talking about closing. You know, the ?
home ownership gap was beginning to close between black and white ?
America, thanks to Fannie and Freddy and a lot of banks. And I remember ?
when Obama's people came in, they were saying, oh, the banks did this. ?
And I remember trying to tell people, in fact, that's when I stopped ?
getting invited to meet Mr.?

Ken Bacon (02:37:57) - Treasury. I said, yeah, the banks did some bad ?
things, but you can't beat on the banks cuz you need 'em. And now if you ?
are at a bank, you are scared to take a lot of risk because if something ?
goes wrong, you know, you get slammed. Right. So one of the loss to me ?
was, it wasn't just Fanny and Freddie, it was the loss of an idea that ?
the GSEs and big banks could help close the gap and that they to do so, ?
they needed to take a risk and be innovative. And I think we've come up ?
with regulatory regimes that make it hard to do that. And you don't hear ?
people talking about it. I mean, you hear people talking about ?
inequalities. You hear people saying, oh, we need to do more. Mm-hmm. . ?
But when the rubber meets the road, the rubber meets the road.?

Ken Bacon (02:38:54) - Like, yeah guys, you can talk about education, you ?
can talk about job, let's talk about where people live, and let's not ?
talk about mandates. Let's talk about what you're doing with the money to ?
build it. And what you're doing is support people who want to buy that ?
home. The dream has become tarnished and no one really wants to talk ?
about the the financial commitment it will take to make the dream alive. ?
And that's to me, I mean, again, you might say, well Ken, that's not as ?
much personal, but that's the thing I hate the most. That's the biggest ?
loss.?

John Coe (02:39:32) - So what was the biggest surprise in your, in

Ken Bacon (02:39:33) - Your career??

John Coe (02:39:36) - What hits you from Wow, this is amazing. Or

Ken Bacon (02:39:40) - I'd say that the biggest surprise to me is that ?
when I look at, uh, corporate America today has been the progress that's ?
been made. And, and by the way, I'm not satisfied with it. There's still ?
a long way to go. But there is more. You go look at a lot of major ?
companies today and the women, the blacks, the Asians and Latins that you ?
see people who were traditionally not part of it. That they're there. ?
And, uh, classic example, I'm watching 60 Minutes last night.?

John Coe (02:40:24) - I watched

Ken Bacon (02:40:24) - It too. And who did you see from Google? There was ?
a woman, an Indian ceo, Indian c o, and an African, you know, again, so ?
we had two immigrants all

John Coe (02:40:37) - Articulate

Ken Bacon (02:40:38) - Very, and they're running artificial intelligence. ?
That's right. Right. In other words, they didn't say, oh, let's, let's ?
try out our diversity, let's show it. Like, they didn't say, this is our ?
head of diversity, this is our head of artificial intelligence. This is ?
the ceo. Deep mind. Deep mind. Right. Yeah. So, you know, to me that was ?
just amazingly telling, right. That they could show that. And that's, ?
it's a surprise because again, 30 years ago it wasn't like that. And ?
it's, that's the thing that this country should celebrate. And that's the ?
thing I always worry about us losing. It's a surprise because it wasn't ?
like that growing up and it's a surprise cause you don't hear enough ?
about us.?

John Coe (02:41:28) - So what advice would you give your 25 year old self ?
today, Ken??

Ken Bacon (02:41:33) - Um, take more risk. Don't be afraid. Uh, and, uh, ?
dream big. Uh, but don't forget who you are. Uh, one of the things I tell ?
young black executives is that two traps. And I had Dick Parsons, I had a ?
great advisor, Dick Parsons, who became chair of the Time Water and City ?
Bank. But when I was at Morgan Stanley, he was an investment banking ?
client. That's how I met him. He was on the board at Fannie Mae and he ?
said that two traps as a black executive, you can't fall into. One is the ?
anger trap that every time somebody gives you feedback or every time ?
something doesn't happen your way, that you blame it on your race. But ?
the other trap is that you ignore it. And it's hard to balance those ?
things. Because I remember one time I was talking to Dick and I was ?
talking about trying to become an evp and he laughed.?

Ken Bacon (02:42:38) - He said, well, don't forget, it's hard for the ?
white guys too.  . He said, it ain't easy for anybody, but there, there's ?
a balance. So there there've been times in my life. I I thought race. ?
Yeah. Even today. Yeah. There times. But I can't obsess over that and I ?
can't become angry about that. Or, and I can't see every setback in life ?
is due to race. And that's hard. And I worry about my kids because they ?
grew up in a different world. I worry about my daughter as a woman. I ?
made it a point with my daughter to meet my daughter worked for Debbie ?
Harm one summer, and my daughter said, well, Danny, I don't know if I ?
mentioned, I said, I want you to meet an incredible woman. Mm-hmm. , ?
Debbie Harmon is an incredible woman. I introduced my daughters at Bain ?
because one of my business school classmates, Phyllis yell, is on the ?
management committee. And once I'm in Martha, Virginia, I said, I want ?
you to go meet. Kelly says, go have lunch with Phillips. I made it a ?
point to do that because I wanted her to see successful women who ?
achieved a lot career wise, had families, had a full life.?

John Coe (02:43:44) - You should introduce your daughter to Catherine ?
Buell. Yeah.?

Ken Bacon (02:43:47) - May Bell Wilman. Jesus.?

John Coe (02:43:48) - She's a special lady,?

Ken Bacon (02:43:50) - . So, you know, I try to, so, so that's the thing. ?
So it's, it's, it's a balance. Look, there's always gonna be ?
antisemitism, there's always gonna be some type of ism. There's always ?
gonna be somebody against you. But people who achieve great things, ?
they're aware of it and they move on through it and they deal with it.?

John Coe (02:44:13) - So Ken, my final question. If you could post a ?
bill, a statement on a billboard on the Capitol beltway for millions to ?
see, what would it say??

Ken Bacon (02:44:22) - You know, I think I would put it, it wouldn't be a ?
complete sentence. I think I'd put down listen period. Read period think, ?
period. Act love.?

John Coe (02:44:38) - That's great. Ken, thank you very much for this ?
wide ranging conversation. This has been very good. Thank you. Thank you. ?
I really appreciate it.?

Ken Bacon (02:44:47) - Okay. Thank you man. Giving me a chance to ?
pontificate .?