JENNIFER HILLERY: All I had to do was eat ice cream at the ice cream counter.

It was no wonder I thought this business was my destiny.

HARRY HARDING: I found myself in a large bay window hanging up a "buy one, get one half off" sale sign in a Downtown Boston Foot Locker.

BOBBIE WAYNE: What am I gonna do?

I got everyone all excited.

And besides, the hospital staff is taking bets that we can't pull it off.

THERESA OKOKON: Tonight's theme is "You're Hired."

♪ ♪ Oftentimes, our jobs seem unremarkable, but other times, they are anything but.

The challenges start to arise, and we have the opportunity to rise to the occasion and demonstrate our worth.

We often begin our careers filled with doubt, but if we are lucky, we end up finding our true calling.

Tonight, stories about work are taking center stage.

♪ ♪ HILLERY: My name is Jennifer Hillery.

I live north of Boston.

I grew up in rural Vermont.

I opened a public speaking club business.

It's called Redwood Speaking.

And I'm also an active volunteer in my community.

And I understand that through Redwood you help people feel more confident using their voice.

What do you like about public speaking?

What I love is that your voice is unique, and I really want others to understand that you don't have to speak in a particular way.

What would you say that you've discovered about yourself through the process of personal storytelling?

I am a highly sensitive person, and there are times when I talk about personal stories where my emotion starts to come up... Mmm.

...and I've begun to accept that.

I used to try to quell that emotion, but it's actually an asset, and it makes my stories real.

And so I feel more comfortable with that emotion in my personal stories.

When I was a kid, I thought the restaurant business was in my blood.

I would sit at a booth at the Ground Round restaurant with my mom and my younger sister, eating popcorn out of a wicker basket, and watching my dad work his magic around that dining room.

He would greet customers like old friends, he would help waitresses refill water glasses, and he would check in on diners about their meal.

He had worked his way up, from a dishwasher to a manager of that Ground Round, and a Howard Johnson's down the street.

When we were done eating our meal, which always included dessert in a plastic baseball cap, we would head into the kitchen, where the kitchen staff and the cooks greeted us like celebrities.

It was around this age as well, when I was four or five, that I was recruited to be in a Howard Johnson's commercial.

All I had to do was eat ice cream at the ice cream counter.

It was no wonder I thought this business was my destiny.

(laughter) By the time I was ten, my dad had purchased his own family-style restaurant, and I would occasionally help him bus tables or work at catering events.

We would serve chili to tired and cold skiers or hot apple cider donuts to festival churchgoers.

My dad always handled those crowds with calm and a smile.

When I was in high school, I started working at the Taco Bell franchise he then owned.

I worked at the cash register, and I could tell you the difference between a Burrito Supreme and a 7-Layer Burrito with ease.

(laughter) My dad, he showed me how to handle those customer complaints that would come through, with kindness and grace and always a free taco to keep that customer happy.

(light chuckling) And in college, I started waitressing.

And while I had the multitasking skills down, it was clear that I lacked something else critical for the restaurant business.

Coordination.

(laughter) The summer of my junior year in college, I was working at a local Italian restaurant.

My parents, my grandparents, my sister and her boyfriend all came in to eat while I was working.

They thought this would be fun, and they came in to celebrate my sister's high school graduation.

I took their drink orders, and in a moment that I can only describe as hubris, I held that tray of drinks over my shoulder with one hand.

I made my way across the dining room, successfully put down everyone's drink except my grandmother's glass of red wine.

At this point, I am standing over my grandmother's shoulder when the glass of wine begins to slide down the tray.

Everything moved in slow motion.

The base of that wine glass caught the lip of the tray and tipped, striking my grandmother in the top center of her head.

(laughter) The red wine poured down her face, under her glasses... (laughter) across the front of her white Floridian suit.

(laughter) The span of that single glass of wine made the table and the curtain next to her look like a crime scene.

(laughter) My dad and my sister's boyfriend, who were sitting across from my grandmother, jumped back in their seats and their jaws dropped open, while I fell to my knees and shouted, "Grandma!"

(holding last syllable) (laughter) The dining room was silent.

And my dad, the ever master of ceremonies, turned to the other patrons and said, "Don't worry, it's her grandmother."

(laughter) I was horrified and my grandmother, sensing this, turned to my family at the table with her finger outstretched and said, "We are never to talk about this again."

(laughter) My grandmother is 98 this month.

She... (cheers and applause) She doesn't know I'm telling you this story.

(laughter) To the relief of my family, and to my relief, I was a government major in college.

I signed up to take the LSAT, the law school admissions test that fall, and I went on to become a lawyer, a volunteer, and a mother.

I never set foot in a restaurant again as an employee.

But all the while, I watched my dad continue to have success in that business, including making it out of the pandemic with his two restaurants still intact.

(applause) This past year, he retired after 50-years-plus in the restaurant business, and he passed the torch of ownership of those businesses to my sister and brother-in-law; the boyfriend there that day.

They are both highly coordinated.

(laughter) My dad's retirement has caused me to reflect on his career and my own.

And while that incident with the wine secured my trajectory away from the restaurant business, my five-year-old self was onto something.

Everything I watched and witnessed in those restaurant walls does run through my veins.

It has informed how I managed the hectic courtrooms I once found myself in, how I work cooperatively at the table with fellow community members, and it has helped me in my hardest job of being a parent to three that requires multitasking daily.

I hope that my children will reflect on me at work and say, "Oh, she did that "with grace and kindness, calm and a smile, and maybe even a little magic."

But don't worry, if you ever dine at my table, I won't serve the red wine.

(laughter) Thank you.

(cheers and applause) HARDING: My name is Harry Harding I'm from Boston, Massachusetts.

I am a executive for a nonprofit.

I'm a professor, consultant, entrepreneur, writer, and I'm a father.

And I understand that you have also published two books of poetry.

- Yeah.

Can you tell me a bit about what about your life brought you to be a poet?

When I graduated high school, my principal at my school read one of my poems for the entire graduation, and he did so without telling me.

And, you know, I just thought to myself, of all the students that are graduating today, of all the talents he could have picked out, you know, the fact that he picked a poem that I did, that was validating, it was humbling, and again, it sparked that need to want to continue to write more poetry.

So what's been most challenging for you in the process of preparing your story for tonight?

In this, the difficult was, again, being very intentional about word choice and about pacing.

Um, and, you know, the connection with the audience and those things, I think are a bit more natural for me to do, um, you know, based on the work that I do.

But telling stories in a way that has a cadence to it.

I think that's where, you know, that's the skill.

Around the same time I graduated high school, one of my favorite movies of all time was released.

It was titled after the main character who became an inspiration for my career, Jerry Maguire.

(laughter) Master of the living room.

King of the house calls.

"Show me the money!"

You, you remember.

So, you may be wondering how a Black man from Boston took inspiration from a short, pompous, temperamental white man in Hollywood.

(laughter) Jerry Maguire is a professional sports agent.

And after the film was released, I studied sports feverishly, I watched sports feverishly.

I studied sport management.

I even earned a degree in it.

Two years after earning that degree, I found myself in a large bay window, hanging up a "buy one, get one half off" sale sign in a Downtown Boston Foot Locker.

(laughter) On one hand, I was doing just fine.

I was an upward mobile manager in a globally recognizable athletic retailer.

My wardrobe was definitely upgraded.

I had every hat, jersey, sneaker you could possibly think of.

My closet was vibrant and full, but my inner spirit was dim.

My sense of purpose was unfulfilled.

I felt like Jerry Maguire at the beginning of the film.

He's experiencing this existential crisis, this loss of identity.

And in his malaise, he pens a manifesto for the masses that actually gets him fired, but ultimately becomes the trigger for his career elevation.

I'm a pretty good writer, but I chose not to write a mass manifesto.

I wanted out of retail and those close to me knew it.

They did their best to console and advise me.

My best friend, who just so happened to enjoy the 30% off discount, thought I should stay with Foot Locker.

(laughter) Keep moving up the corporate ladder.

My mother said, "Apply for a state job; stability, good benefits."

Another good friend of mine said, "Maybe you should get into social work."

And I was thinking to myself, "Well, isn't that for women and people who don't like making money?"

(laughter) No thanks, I'll stick to my malaise.

So one Friday night after work, my malaise and I were invited to a local community center.

(laughter) During intermission, I'm in the restroom, and I'm exiting after washing my hands, and before I could exit bursts in this 15-year-old, in a panic.

Makes eye contact with me and says, "Excuse me, sir, do you know how to tie a tie?"

I got you.

As I'm tying his tie, three more young men came in.

One of them was relieved to see me and he said, "Oh, you know how to tie a tie?

Can you help us, too?"

(laughter) And just like that, I went from a casual observer to a volunteer.

When I went back into the audience, I watched those same young men from the bathroom strut on a makeshift stage, doing their best impersonations of catwalk models.

Kanye West's "College Dropout" is blasting through the speakers.

The audience is clapping and cheering.

The vibes were off the chart.

And I remembered this feeling I had inside.

That dim, incandescent glow had become this bright, radiant sunlight.

In ten minutes of tying ties, I had more reward than in two years of selling shoes.

About a month later, I found myself at the same community center, this time not as a casual observer or a volunteer, but as an employee.

I had traded my store manager title for case manager.

At Foot Locker, I probably had a hundred eager teens make applications every week wanting to work there.

And now, as a case manager, I was doing weekly workshops on how to write resumes, and how to dress for success for those same eager teens.

I had found social work after all.

And it turns out, there are plenty of women and men who do this work.

(laughter) Also turns out that plenty of them do care about money.

They just also happen to care about things other than material and valuables you can't find in a paycheck.

The truth is, these people, doing some of the most vitally important work that there is, they should be the ones screaming to the top of their lungs, "Show me the money."

(applause) Now, more than five years ago, I was standing in line at McDonald's, and with me was an eight-year-old diagnosed with autism named Matthew.

And Matthew had a very curious obsession with the song "Uptown Funk" from Bruno Mars... ...and vacuum cleaners.

(laughter) No, I'm serious.

Matthew could tell you the make, model and specs of any vacuum cleaner on the market.

Hoover High Performance Stand Up?

Check.

Dyson Cordless with the swivel?

Mm-hmm.

BISSELL SuperSense with the AeroSlim technology.

Don't get him started.

(laughter) Seriously, Matthew was brilliant.

So after one of our weekly trips to the Oreck retailer... (laughter) I'm standing in line for lunch and a young Hispanic man in his early 20s tapped me on my shoulder.

And as I turned around, I recognized his face, but he had to remind me of his name-- Armindo.

And Armindo couldn't wait to tell me about how good things were going for him.

They had just bought a house, and he was working full-time at a youth detention center.

And that he was inspired to choose that profession because of the work I did when he was a teen at the community center.

Spoiler alert: I did not become a pro sports agent.

(laughter) I did become a pro change agent.

And what's interesting is, the same skills and qualities that it took Jerry Maguire to do his job are the same skills and qualities that I brought to the communities that I did work in and in families' homes.

Oftentimes, when there was a really challenging young person or a really challenging family circumstance to deal with, they asked me to go and help.

I had a pretty good success rate.

So actually, I did become the master of the living room, and the king of house calls.

I'm still waiting for them to show me the money.

(laughter) But it's safe to say after 20 years, social work had me at "hello."

(audience "aww's") Thank you.

(cheers and applause) ♪ ♪ WAYNE: I'm Bobbie Wayne.

I'm a native New Yorker living in Marblehead, Massachusetts, now.

And I'm a singer-songwriter.

I play the harp.

I'm a writer writer.

I'm actually just writing a book.

And, uh, I am also an artist.

And who's the first person that you performed music with?

That would be Pete Seeger.

And how did Pete Seeger influence you?

WAYNE: Pete is one of the most honest people I ever met.

He has such integrity and he influenced me in that I wanted to use my music and my art skills the way that he did, to help people.

And what kind of stories do you most like to tell?

Well, the stories...

I've been writing down stories for many years.

Much of them are very funny because I've had a very odd life being in so many different arts.

Mmm.

So a lot of them are, are very funny, "the joke's on me" kind of stories, things where I've learned the hard way.

♪ ♪ I graduated from college in 1969 with a bachelor's degree in voice and no marketable skills.

I taught, that summer, drama and poetry at a camp in the woods.

I had no teaching skills either, but I found I had a knack for it.

A local state school and hospital heard there was a musician living nearby and asked me to come for an interview.

So I rode a rickety bus through a rainstorm and then the hospital appeared through the mist like some ominous castle.

It was basically a warehouse for 3,000 adults and kids with disabilities.

The sights, sounds, and smells were terrifying enough, but when a half-naked patient tried to rip off my hairpiece, I knew I didn't want this job.

I was a sensitive musician but I needed money to go back to graduate school in opera.

So, reluctantly, I accepted.

For the first two weeks, I was allowed to trail the music therapist who was leaving.

But after that, I was on my own, with no direction or supervision.

I walked to the wards with a suitcase of rhythm instruments and a little autoharp.

Now I know how Alice felt when she fell down the rabbit hole, I said.

But soon, curiosity took over.

How could I help these guys using music?

With the higher-functioning residents, I chose specific songs to bring out their verbal skills and I used rhythm to help with movement.

Several months down the line, I discovered a ward packed with cribs, each one containing a non-toilet-trained, non-verbal adult.

These folks had lain horizontally their whole lives and, as a result, their muscles had atrophied and drawn up.

But I noticed that when I played the autoharp, they shook with excitement.

So I got a bunch of bleach bottles and I cut the handles out and I fitted them on their hands.

And then I stuck a rhythm stick with bells on it in the handle hole.

So now when they shook, they were ringing the bells.

I figured if they could learn to voluntarily move their arms, eventually they could learn to move a swivel spoon to their mouth.

I had high expectations.

I didn't know any better.

I'd say, "Hey, you never know unless you try."

Four years later, I'm working at a psychiatric institute in a music therapy department, and I'm telling my supervisor and buddy, Nancy, "Hey, you never know unless you try it."

"It," this time, refers to a full production of the musical Camelot using the psychiatric patients.

I'll adapt the script so that Arthur can narrate much of the action from a podium.

We can use the back ward patients for the townspeople.

We can even make a cardinal out of one of them.

The new fellow, James, on the acute ward, I think he has acting experience.

He could play Lancelot.

And Barb, you know her, she uses a wheelchair.

She had polio as a child, and she has very low self-esteem.

Guinevere would be the perfect part for her.

My problem was Arthur.

Two Arthurs quit within a week.

Then I thought of Dennis, a young resident from the inner city with such acute anxiety that he whispered when he spoke.

This would empower him.

It's the perfect part for him.

I can mic the podium so he can be heard.

Dennis quit within a week.

What am I going to do?

I got everyone all excited.

This is probably the best thing that's ever happened to some of these residents.

And besides, the hospital staff is taking bets that we can't pull it off.

I'm not beyond bribing someone if it's for their own good.

"Dennis," I said, "if you do this, "I'll take you out to a fancy restaurant for a steak dinner and a glass of wine."

Dennis considered.

"Okay, I'm in."

Two incredible high school volunteers, some artistic patients, and I made costumes, scenery, even a castle.

We rehearsed every day for months.

I sent out press releases to the local media and invited all the family members of the cast to come.

When the day arrived, we all had opening night jitters.

The volunteers were backstage to help.

Nancy and I were in the orchestra pit, Nancy at the piano, I at the conducting podium holding my baton in my slightly shaking hand like it was a magic wand.

We began the overture, and I took a peek to see who was in the audience.

Dennis's whole family had taken a train out to see him.

This was possibly the only live stage show they'd ever seen.

The overture came to an end, the lights went down, and the curtains opened, and Dennis stood behind the podium, dressed as King Arthur with a crown on his head.

For several heart-stopping moments, he was speechless.

We made eye contact, and then King Arthur began to speak.

A week later, I took Dennis out to a fancy restaurant for a steak dinner and a glass of wine.

We toasted to happy-ever-afterings.

I'd worked for seven years now, and I had enough money to go back to graduate school.

So a month after Camelot, I left.

But then I called Nancy a few months later.

"How's everyone doing?"

"Well, they're fine.

"Ed, the patient from the chronic ward "who was the cardinal, he's still in character.

He's strutting around the place, blessing people."

"And Dennis?

How's Dennis?"

"Oh, his folks were so amazed at him, "they gave him all kinds of newfound respect.

He checked himself out and went home."

I was changed, too.

I realized that my skills were valuable.

That job counselor and that hospital staff had been wrong, not just about me, but about the patients, because our skills were different from the majority.

My so-called handicapped patients had taught me that we all have abilities and disabilities.

It's just part of life.

But that's not what defines us.

It's how we make use of what we've got that matters.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪