Hear about Gigi Dixon’s trailblazing journey

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Transcript:

[Michael:] Hello, my name is Michael Liersch. Welcome to the About Money podcast by Wells Fargo. Today we have a very special guest, Gigi Dixon, who’s the head of external engagement at Wells Fargo. Well, Gigi, it’s great to have you on the Wells Fargo About Money podcast. You and I have known each other for a bit of time now. Yet we’re still learning about each other.

[Gigi:] And it’s awesome. So Michael, it’s great to be here with you. I feel like I can reach out and hug you right now.

[Michael:] Well, let’s give each other a hug. Why not? So when we think of this idea of an executive, a lot of our listeners want to hear about different professionals and how they live their lives. You know, so you’re an executive here at Wells Fargo. You’ve been one for a number of decades. So what do you do right now? Explain that. Because, you know, when people read it, it has a certain meaning. But when you explain, it has a different meaning.

[Gigi:] What I do right now is I’m the head of external engagement. I work in diverse segments, representation, and inclusion. That is a new business that Charlie, our CEO, stood up, as you know, Michael.

[Michael:] So where Gigi is at and what she’s leading is really the identity of Wells Fargo and how it’s presented to the external environment, which clearly has an internal component to it, too, because we actually have to be that, to your point. So when you’re speaking with whether it’s another financial institution, whether it’s, to your point, a government agency, whether it’s to a community who wants to know more about Wells Fargo, can you give us a few top-line, think of it as bullet points and executive speak about like what you say to them. Like, what is Wells Fargo to you, Gigi?

[Gigi:] Yeah. Well, to me, Wells Fargo is a company of committed professionals who really want to see our customers, our communities succeed, our stakeholders succeed. How do we do that? Well, we try to build best-in-class products and services that are relevant for those customers, those communities. We try to make sure that those products and services are accessible to those customers and communities, and we want to make sure that we’re engaging in a way that we’re receiving feedback from them so that together we’re building what this company becomes.

More importantly, we want to make sure we’re attracting great workforce that represents those customers in those communities, one that looks like them, one that they can trust, build credibility with, and move forward in their financial journey with, for life. Wells Fargo is a full-service financial services company. And what I used to tell people when I first started in banking was, wow, I didn’t know you could go to one institution, honestly, from birth until your family legacy gets passed along doing business with that institution. We have access to, or we can guide our customers through life financially. And that’s a beautiful thing.

[Michael:] It really is. And there’s a real purpose to that, which our listeners know because the About Money podcast is all about being intentional, articulating what you want to accomplish, and then making sure your money is aligned to that. So it sounds like that’s your articulation of Wells Fargo as an executive. It’s designed to do that. That’s how you present us to the external environment.

[Gigi:] That’s right.

[Michael:] And so my next question is how did you get here? So moving away from your current role, you’re in this magnificent role where you’re interacting with, you know, again, government leaders, leaders of other institutions, research organizations like the Aspen Institute. How did you get to this place? Because our listeners are from all different walks of life, all different ages. And so they might look at you and say, well, there was something that you had handed to you or something special that you had that got you here. So can you describe that?

[Gigi:] Well, you know, thank you for that. Some might say that, but I have to quote Langston Hughes and say, “Son, life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.”

[Michael:] OK.

[Gigi:] So the way that I got here was really interesting. And it’s exciting because it wasn’t easy. It’s been a traveled road of problem-solving and really receiving vision, receiving inputs, a lot of mentorship and sponsorship and guidance. And then just saying, OK, I’m going to surrender who this person Gigi is to this opportunity and see what comes of it.

So it was not a deliberate path in terms of my career. I am a performing artist. I love to sing, I love to act, I love to dance. I have a grandchild that is my mini me. She studies opera right now. She’s 11 years old, and I really enjoy watching her grow into her talent.

[Michael:] So are you into opera too? I don’t mean to interject here.

[Gigi:] Oh, I studied opera in high school. I was a lyric soprano. Of course, you have to rest and eat well to do opera. You know, you can’t just wake up and sing an aria. You can, but it’s not going to be the best.

[Michael:] So it’s not going to sound great.

[Gigi:] It’s not going to be the best quality. You really, it’s the voice. The vocal cords are a muscle, and you have to exercise that. But I’m a performing artist. That’s my passion, my gift. I love it. But then I grew into going to college. I studied speech communication and theater, stayed with the arts through that and got really interested in media.

[Michael:] OK. And tell everyone where you went to college because people are interested.

[Gigi:] I went to Tennessee State University in Nashville, Tennessee. It is a fantastic HBCU, and if you talk to people who attended HBCUs, we all compete with each other. We think ours is the best.

[Michael:] And tell our listeners what an HBCU is.

[Gigi:] An HBCU is a historically black college or university.

[Michael:] Amazing.

[Gigi:] Yes. And Tennessee State, which was founded in back in the early 1900s as Tennessee A&I, Agricultural and Industrial institute, is a land grant institution that was established for slaves to be educated to take care of — former slaves to take care of their families and to get a higher education. And this is post-slavery. So it is a land grant institution publicly funded, which means, you know, it’s open to all people.

[Michael]: Yes.

[Gigi:] But they are highly, their student body is, highly diverse and oftentimes majority African-American.

[Michael:] So when you think of that institution and the gifts that it provided you and you leaned into those, it sounds like, what did you most take away from that education to bring it into this idea of combining that performance element? But also, a lot of people get intimidated by banking.

[Gigi:] Yes, they do.

[Michael:] And they say, I can’t work at a bank. I don’t know numbers. I don’t understand all the mathematical inputs. It seems very intense and very, you know, it’s like another language. So what happened there?

[Gigi:] Well, so for me at Tennessee State, it parlayed me into corporate America, interestingly enough. And as a performing artist and coming through media and communications, I have a command for speech. And I do like standing in front of audiences; it’s something that comes fairly naturally to me. I got very engaged in student leadership at Tennessee State, and I made history at the university. I am the first female president of student government in the history of Tennessee State.

[Michael:] You just gave me chills. That’s amazing.

[Gigi:] Thank you. Thank you. And it was something, I didn’t go there to be the president of SGA. And this is where when you talk about career trajectory, being open, being curious, first of all, curious to my environment, go to an HBCU, didn’t plan to go to an HBCU. I was going to Northwestern. Mom — my mother made me go to Tennessee State University.

She said, You need to know what it’s like to be black in America. You need to be in an environment that’s going to be friendly and nurturing for you. You’re going to Tennessee State like your sister, brother, and I did. So it’s a family thing.

[Michael:] Yeah, I got it.

[Gigi:] I get there, and I’m curious about this environment and I’m curious about what does HBCU mean? Me too, Michael. I didn’t, you know, didn’t think about it. Got there, learned the history of historically black colleges and universities, learned about slavery.

[Michael:] OK.

[Gigi:] I’m a military brat. I was born in the Air Force. We didn’t even talk about race. And I was born in 1960. Think about timing, right? So, I get there, I get curious. I learn about slavery. Then I start to learn about the struggle of black people in America. And I’m like, OK, Mommy wants me to know what it means to be black in America, looking at this stuff.

And then I get a little bit into activism. Because I learn while I’m on that campus that the state of Tennessee is trying to force that institution to become University of Tennessee, Nashville, and lose its historically black legacy.

[Michael:] Interesting. Which is a core part of its identity.

[Gigi:] It’s a core part of its identity. So I started to question that. And I build relationships with administration and staff at the university, and I’m interviewing them. I’m a media major. So I’m just … Why is the state doing this? What does it mean? What does that mean for the future of this institution that, oh, by the way, educated my sister, my brother, my mother, her cousins.

[Michael:] So things are going pretty well. So what are we changing here?

[Gigi:] Exactly. A university that at that time was number one in the nation in electrical engineering, which is my brother’s degree. I’m thinking, OK, we’re graduating some pretty rock star folks. You know, Wilma Rudolph. She’s a Tennessee state graduate. And if no one knows who that is, of course, she’s one of the first black women to win an Olympics award for track and field.

[Michael:] So there’s just a really broad-ranging, successful set of graduates. So what are we doing here? So you’re talking to these policymakers?

[Gigi:] I’m talking to the university.

[Michael:] Oh, to the university.

[Gigi:] Right. Not the policymakers yet.

[Michael:] OK. All right. I’m jumping ahead, sorry.

[Gigi:] Yeah, it’s OK. When I’m talking to the university and the leadership start to tell me the history and they tell me what the issues are. And I build a relationship with the president of the university, Dr. Frederick Humphries. And he’s like, OK, you really do want to know and you want to do something. And so I became very actively engaged in student leadership.

[Michael:] I see.

[Gigi:] Then the university is asked to send the student regent to the State Board of Regents for higher education. I became that student regent. And then a young lady who’s also a graduate of Tennessee State comes home from college and she starts to work for the governor. Her name is Cassandra T. Walker.

[Michael:] OK.

[Gigi:] And her parents happened to let me come and eat dinner with them on Sundays. And they’re two professors, one retired, the other is still at the university, the Teagues.

[Michael:] OK.

[Gigi:] They basically interested in this young lady. She’s very curious. Who is she? Little did I know these people are literally forming the person that I would become, right?

[Michael:] That’s unbelievable.

[Gigi:] But Cassandra T. Walker becomes an assistant to the governor and hires me as the governor’s intern from higher education. So I work for Lamar Alexander now, who ultimately becomes the Secretary of Education. But I’m working for him. I’m matriculating at Tennessee State University. I’m learning about this black history, and I am deciding in my own heart, in my own life, that I have to do something about this.

[Michael:] Wow. And it’s all because you were curious.

[Gigi:] All because I was curious.

[Michael:] You leaned into your family story and narrative. And then you incorporate that as part of your identity and your passion. And it sounds like the parts that maybe I would say, and we talk about this a lot on the podcast, that you might be not telling us about is all the hard work that you put into all that learning, you know, all the background, who it was you were interacting with, and ultimately, you probably had a sense that you had to show up in a very professional way. Is that true?

[Gigi:] I did. I absolutely did.

[Michael:] So how did you do that? What did … where did you learn that? Because a lot of people and a lot of our listeners, and I’ve talked about this in my own family life, I grew up very poor. I had no models, no examples. So how did you model that? Was that from your mother? Was it from a family member?

[Gigi:] Yeah, that’s very interesting. My mother, she loved fashion.

[Michael:] OK.

[Gigi:] And she’s the wife of an airman, Air Force Airman, who was in Special Forces, who was gone a lot. The way she spent her time when we were living in the military and living in base housing earlier, was that she would sew. She would make our clothes. She made all of our clothes. And she kept up with the latest fashions and she took us shopping and we would feel fabrics and she would teach us the different types of fabrics.

[Michael:] I used to roll fabric at a fabric mill.

[Gigi:] So you understand.

[Michael]: Oh, yeah, totally.

[Gigi]: You know, that’s one of the most peaceful things you can ever do, is just feel the fabric.

[Michael:] Well, I agree. I would roll it and I’d carry it. And it was a very, it is actually very peaceful. The smell isn’t great in the fabric mill, but it’s OK.

[Gigi:] Well, even in retail sometimes. The different, yeah, the different fibers. But … so, mom she kept us dressed very well as children. And then when I got to college, I noticed on the campus that the student leaders dressed well every day. At the historically black college Tennessee State, we had a pretty well-renowned business school in addition to the engineering program. The head of the business school would not allow you to come to classes in the business school without wearing a business suit or business attire.

[Michael:] So it was required professional dress.

[Gigi:] Yes, they were making and molding us through that experience. And when I decided to be a student leader and someone challenged me to consider running for student government president, I started to look around at the current president and his cabinet, and his council, the broader council. And I noticed that they all presented themselves pretty professionally as student leaders.

So I decided, well, but they’re all men, for the most part, and if I’m going to do this, then I’m going to need to fit in, in a sense. So I’m going to have to get people comfortable with the notion of me leading this institution as a student government president. And so when I was, I won by a 70% margin, I worked my way up to that through curiosity, through compassion, through really just listening and making myself available. The way that I had to prepare to do that was to excel academically. Because as a female back then, in that environment, there are a couple of things that I could not be known for. One was being in a clique. I couldn’t be too closely associated with any specific thing.

[Michael:] So you had to be accessible.

[Gigi:] I had to be accessible.

[Michael:] To everybody, just like Wells Fargo, bringing it back there. OK.

[Gigi:] That’s right. And then the second thing was, of course, I had to watch my social behavior.

[Michael:] OK, what does that mean exactly?

[Gigi:] That means I couldn’t be promiscuous.

[Michael:] OK. All right.

[Gigi:] Nor could I be, you know, out partying all the time? So … and that really wasn’t something, it was, I didn’t go to college to party all the time.

[Michael:] But a lot of people do go to college to party. And that’s fun. And that’s fine.

[Gigi:] Some people do. I partied a little, let’s be clear.

[Michael:] OK. All right.

[Gigi:] Gigi can have fun. Gigi likes to have fun.

[Michael:] I know that about you, Gigi, but I wanted you to say it, not me.

[Gigi:] Yeah, Gigi like to have fun. But at the same time, Gigi is always conscious of who is around her and how she is investing in them.

[Michael:] Understood.

[Gigi:] It’s kind of a selfless thing. Leadership is selfless, and we could talk about that. But I knew number two, I had to be careful with how I showed up in terms of my social behavior.

[Michael:] No matter what the environment.

[Gigi:] And thirdly, I needed to kill it academically. I needed all of my outside interest, all of my extracurricular activity could not supersede what I was really there for, which is to get my higher education degree and to position myself for a career.

[Michael:] So did that come naturally to you? Did you just get A-pluses and not have to do anything?

[Gigi:] It did not. It did not. And, you know, I heard a good friend of mine use a statement that rings true for me, and it’s exactly how I approached my grade point average. And he talks about being an active architect of your life. And so what you do is you literally sit down, you set a goal. My goal was I wanted to be on the dean’s list and I wanted to graduate with honors.

[Michael:] OK.

[Gigi:] And so I talked to my professors and I said, I want to be on the dean’s list and I want to graduate with honors. And I started that in my freshman year. So let’s talk about what I need to do to get there.

[Michael:] I love it.

[Gigi:] And so I allowed them to invest in my future as I was investing in myself.

[Michael:] That is a really intense suggestion to our audience. And so this is all about advice, this podcast is. And so when we think about that, I did something very similar and I didn’t do it as intentionally as you did. I wanted to get a Ph.D. No one else in my family had ever gotten one. I was only behind my brother as the second person to get a college degree in my family, and I did something similar. I went to a professor that I wanted to work with to get a Ph.D., and I said, What do I have to do to get this? I don’t know. And he said, You need to take my class and get perfect scores on every exam. And I thought to myself, I can do that.

[Gigi:] Knowledge is everything, Michael. Knowledge is everything.

[Michael:] But it takes studying. I didn’t do anything else except study.

[Gigi:] That’s OK. But you knew what you needed to do.

[Michael:] That’s right.

[Gigi:] That’s just like when people want access to credit, they come and they might put in a loan request and get denied. And if they walk away, not understanding why they’re denied or not understanding what they could do better to get access to it, shame on them and us for not telling.

[Michael:] Totally. It’s just about that communication.

[Gigi:] It’s about communication.

[Michael:] Yeah.

[Gigi:] It’s also, you know, the curiosity.

[Michael:] Well, 100%. And the reason why I also went to that modeling and, you know, down to like observing how other people behave and dress. So something similar to what you did. I worked at Nordstrom in high school to learn. I worked in something called men’s furnishings to learn how to dress professionally. So I sold the clothes. I didn’t know how they fit together. I didn’t know what tie went with what. But over time I just saw the other salespeople, the clients walk in, and I figured it out. And I was young, so they all thought I was fun and, you know, squeezed my cheeks and wanted to help me out too. So the clients would even tell me that’s not right. And then, and to your point, I decided to be curious and sacrifice my ego and be vulnerable, which is a bit of what you’re describing here too.

[Gigi:] It is very much so what I’m describing. It was very vulnerable of me to walk up in the president’s office and say, I’m really concerned about Tennessee State, what are we going to do? And then he was vulnerable with me to say there are things I can’t say publicly that you can because you’re paying your tuition.

[Michael:] Interesting. So it became a collaboration.

[Gigi:] It became a collaboration.

[Michael:] So let’s take that into kind of my last set of questions for you. And then I’m going to do some rapid fire for us to get to know you. So between you leaving school and your current role here, tell us what your favorite, think of it as job or experience has been, and you can’t say this one because we know this is your favorite job that you’ve had so far.

[Gigi:] Yeah, this is the longest stint, I would say. But, you know, being the first president of student government at an institution that at that time was, you know, big and at the top of its game, so to speak, still a great school, I garnered a lot of attention. I got recruited from Tennessee State by a Procter & Gamble distributing company.

[Michael:] OK.

[Gigi:] They came and got me, took me to Cincinnati, Ohio, headquarters. I met the CEO as they were recruiting me and they were just stunned with this young woman that had done the things that I had done already, even before graduating from college. They put me in a great territory. I learned the nuts and bolts of marketing and sales.

[Michael:] And had you ever done marketing and sales before?

[Gigi:] Never really, no. Except politics. It’s kind of like marketing and sales.

[Michael:] So you just related your prior experiences.

[Gigi:] I sure did, I sure did. And I was hesitant to take the job because I also had an internship with the NBC affiliate in Nashville. And there’s someone that you know who graduated a little bit before me that had the same internship. Her name is Oprah Winfrey.

[Michael:] OK.

[Gigi:] Yeah, we … same tutelage. Department head told me, you remind me of Oprah, when I first got there as a freshman. And I was like, oh, who? What? What kind of name is that? Of course, I found out a few years later when she got to Chicago and her career started to take off. But the most fun thing of that transition was just learning so much and understanding demographics, psychographics, just the principles of marketing, sales, and strategy.

Procter & Gamble is the best. It’s a great, great platform for me to learn. And then I left after I met my, who became my husband of 40 years now, I met him there and got recruited by a tobacco company.

[Michael:] OK.

[Gigi:] And that was the lesson in real competitive intelligence. I got to use my journalism skills. I was the editor of the corporate magazine. I wrote for the CEO speeches and wrote speeches for the vice president of sales and got to produce training videos.

[Michael:] Interesting.

[Gigi:] Yes. So all of that degree that I got and all of that entertainment and the production and media, I have been able to use in the corporate career over the years. That’s the fun in it all, is that you start out in one place thinking, Oh, I need to go to New York and be on Broadway. And you realize, No, you just need to be curious, courageous, and committed to whatever you’re doing. Lean into it and fly forward in it, and bring people with you.

[Michael:] And I love that last part, because I think a lot of people who think of an executive, they think it’s a zero-sum game, right, where some, they’re winners and losers. And what you’re saying is actually, if you bring everyone together and you all win together, then it makes that journey more likely to be successful. So here, I’m going to go with rapid fire. You ready?

[Gigi]: Go ahead. Go with it.

[Michael]: What’s your biggest failure?

[Gigi:] My biggest failure? I don’t know. I don’t believe in failure. And I don’t even believe in mistakes.

[Michael:] I love it. OK, so then, what book are you reading right now?

[Gigi:] Well, I just finished Walk Through Fire.

[Michael:] OK, tell us about it. What did you love?

[Gigi:] Oh my gosh. Well, you know, Sheila Johnson’s story is amazing. It’s a story of resilience. It’s a story of great pain and great challenge, but enormous triumph. Sheila Johnson is the first black female billionaire in the history of our country.

[Michael:] Which is extraordinary.

[Gigi:] She came, she walked through fire to get there. She and her husband created BET Networks, and her book talks about the challenge of —

[Michael:] That’s Black Entertainment Television.

[Gigi:] Black Entertainment Television, yes. Her book talks about the challenges of building that network, what she had to sacrifice, talks about the challenges as a woman during that time frame, what she had access to and what she didn’t, and her desire to have a family, and the challenges around just trying to have children and then be in a productive marriage relationship and realizing then that she needed to pivot from that and building this huge hospitality business that she now has, Salamander Hotels & Resorts.

[Michael:] Last rapid fire question for you. When you think about your life outside of work, Gigi, what are you most passionate about?

[Gigi:] My grandchildren.

[Michael:] How many grandchildren do you have?

[Gigi:] I have two grandchildren, a boy and a girl — and one boy on the way. Yes. The baby will be here in March of 2024.

[Michael:] What do you love about spending time with them?

[Gigi:] They are young. They are unvarnished. They are curious. And they’re smart as they can be. They are technologically savvy. My grandson is six. My granddaughter is 11. And they know more about technology than I could have dreamed of knowing at that age. We didn’t even have the internet when I was their age, of course, you know. And by the way, the internet’s been around longer than people think.

But anyway, they … they’re just smart. And they keep me energized. They keep me energized. So I kidnap them when I go home. I travel a lot, Michael, you know that. And because I think in relationships and what we do, it’s important to be among the people. And you can’t sit behind a desk all the time and be among the people, you have to choose. So I have chosen in my career to be among the people, to bring as much to them as I can to benefit their lives. I get great joy out of benefiting other people’s lives, that’s just who I am. My life gets benefit from seeing other people thrive.

[Michael:] I love it. Thank you so much for sharing your story with our listeners. You inspire me each and every day. I know you inspire the communities that Wells Fargo works with each and every day, all our partners, our policymakers, everyone. So thank you for being you. And thank you to our listeners for listening.

[Gigi:] Thank you, Michael.

 

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