Josie A. Bass Career Development Program Interview

Summer 2008 marks the 10th anniversary of the Josie A. Bass Career Development Program for African American Students. In March, Errol “Walter” Gray and Aniyia Williams, two former Josie Bass Interns who now work for Wolf Trap, sat down for a conversation with Anthony and Beatrice Welters, philanthropists who created the Josie A. Bass Program, and with the driving force behind the program, Ms. Josie A. Bass. The following is an excerpt from that conversation.

WT: What were some of your original goals for the program?

Tony: Well, for me it was curiosity. What would happen from a career perspective if someone who had an interest in the arts had an opportunity to develop some networking opportunities?

Bea: What better way to have Wolf Trap community outreach than to involve those that would not normally be involved in the Wolf Trap scene seeing what Wolf Trap is doing, learning something, and then taking that skill elsewhere.

Tony: It began as a notion of giving young adults exposure to the arts, not in terms of performance but arts management. What you really want to do is understand the business.

Josie: The core mission was to provide leadership skills development for students in the business aspects of the performing arts industry, and hopefully expose them to alternative career paths that they never thought of. We also wanted to open non-traditional doors to these young people, which is why Bea and Tony have opened their home to interns and take a very hands-on approach.

WT: What advice would you have for students about opening themselves up to opportunities?

Bea: I know what you’re going to say. Let me be the one to say it. First of all they should not be afraid to fail.

Tony: People say, “I’m ready. As soon as that great opportunity comes my way, I’m gonna take advantage of it.” The truth is that opportunity is always there. Opportunities are what you make of them; a lot of people are rigid in their career aspirations and that’s not the way the world works. If I had not taken a career risk, if I had been afraid to fail, we wouldn’t be having this conversation today. So be open to opportunities, not just to some preconceived career path.

Bea: You have to find your own passion. People have to really understand themselves and understand what would make them get up in the morning and be happy and go to work.

Tony: You put so much time into your job. If it’s painful for you to go to work, then do something else. That’s what we’re really talking about: our choices versus obligations.

WT: What do you want interns to take away from the experience, from a business perspective?

Tony: To identify a relationship that they otherwise wouldn’t have had.

Bea: And maybe they take away creating something from the bottom up. Not just seeing the lights but seeing how you get to the lights and the action.

Tony: If you’re going to understand the business, you need to understand the business from the ground up. You’ve got to start at ground level zero. There are no shortcuts.

WT: Have you seen any students who’ve come through the program and have bettered themselves? Do you know any personally?

Josie: Oh, many. One young man, Jason, was from three generations of lawyers, about to be the fourth. And he hated law. He could dance but his parents did not want him to dance. It was clear he was at a critical point in his life. So we assigned him to a mentor who served on the board of every dance group on the East Coast, and they were off and running. He left us and went on to be both a performer and an administrator in a major ballet company.

Tony: In other environments I have run into some of the interns who came up and introduced themselves to me, saying what a great experience it was. It’s almost like putting this into the DNA. It is less important if I know them personally than to know that they capitalized on the opportunity.

WT: How do you see the mentorship benefitting students?

Josie: The mentorship opens social doors that are closed to many of these students. I had some pretty fantastic colleagues and friends and I asked them would you mentor one of my kids? I want you to take them to your homes, I want you to tell them your story—good, bad and indifferent—how you made it, personal struggles and all.

Tony: Being exposed to other things elevates you as an individual and it creates higher expectations. Exposure to the new is an important thing that people lose sight of. Mentorship helps to reinforce the notion that there’s more that you can do and there’s someone that’s really successful you can turn to, bounce ideas, issues, concerns off of.

Bea: Most people think students have started to cope with whatever issues they have personally but they still have a lot that they are dealing with and they do need mentors. They need someone that they feel comfortable with to let go sometimes.

Tony: Everyone has the capacity to do more than they did the day before, whatever that is.

Bea: Mentors play an important part of that.

WT: You have work together and with others to achieve many important things. What advice do you have for people trying to accomplish things as a collective body?

Tony: The reality is very few people are leaders and most people are followers. As a leader, you want to move things forward, to convince people that they can do more than they did the day before. Society is expecting something from all of us, and our society becomes what we make it.

Josie: I can say one thing to you: the power of one. If you can conceive it, you can do it. Wolf Trap is so nurturing, sometimes we just have to kick the kids out. “Twelve weeks is up, you gotta go home.” But some of them come back to work with us, like Walter and Aniyia. And so it’s passed on. We have a network; we have folks doing wonderful jobs they never thought they would do until they came to Wolf Trap.