Worklife with Molly Graham - Why faith has a place at work with Stacy Brown-Philpot

0:02Somebody took a chance on you. That person had faith. Somebody took a chance on me. That person had faith. We are taking chances. Like we're investing in series A company. We have no idea this business is going to go from 3 million to zero or 3 million to 300 million. We don't know. We have done all the data. We have done all the analysis. But we are still making a bet. So what's the difference between making a bet and having faith? Intuition comes up a lot in my work.

0:37It's something you've probably heard me talk about with guests on this show. Every great leader seems to have their own way of knowing, a foundation they build their decisions on, even when the data is incomplete, or even when smart people they trust disagree with them, even when there's no clear right answer. For some people, like Adam Grant, the compass is research and evidence.

1:03For others, like Patty Stone-Cipher, it's a value system, a mission statement that she returns to again and again. For me, it's experience, pattern recognition that I've built up over decades of watching people navigate hard things at work. Today, I want to explore a way of knowing I haven't talked about yet on this show. One that shapes how a lot of people lead, make decisions, and find meaning at work, but almost never comes up in professional conversations. That is, Faith, actual faith, the religious kind. And I don't just mean faith as a belief system. I mean faith as a way of operating, a compass, something that tells you what matters, how to treat people, and what to do when everything else is uncertain. I'll be upfront. I was not raised religious and faith is not a big part of my life.

1:54But I have learned that one of the most valuable things you can do is listen carefully to how someone else navigates the world, especially when their tools are different from yours. So today, I'm listening and learning. What does that kind of faith actually look like at work in real decisions and in hard moments? I'm Molly Graham, and this is Work Life, where we untangle the messy human side of work. My guest today is Stacey Brown Philpott. Stacey grew up in Detroit, went to Wharton and built a career at Google where she ran global operations, among many other things. She then became CEO of TaskRabbit, leading the company through global expansion and an acquisition by IKEA. She is now the founder of Cherry Rock Capital, where she backs underrepresented entrepreneurs building transformative companies. She also sits on a lot of corporate boards.

2:50Stacey has, by any measure, had one of the most impressive careers in tech of the last two decades. Recently, I hosted a fireside chat with Stacey. She talked about leadership, decision-making when the path isn't clear, and being willing to speak up for what you believe in. And then, at the end of our discussion, someone in the audience asked her about her faith. In the moment, she gave a quick answer. But it made me realize there is so much here. So today, We're going to go deep with Stacey on her faith to understand what it means to her personally and professionally, what she's learned from bringing her faith into her work, and what we can learn from it, even if religion isn't central to our lives. Stacey, welcome to work life. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Molly. I'm so glad you're here. So I want to start by asking, I've heard you say that faith is central to your

3:57work and your life. But I want to understand, like, what does faith mean to you? There's a Bible scripture that says that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. And I grew up as a kid hearing that all the time, just, you know, growing up with my grandmother and my mother, and they would talk about having faith when we didn't have certain things that we wish we had.

4:27You've got to have faith and they would quote that scripture. And at some point it became real for me, which is I had hopes and dreams. I didn't know where they were going to come from. And the only thing that I could draw on was my faith that things would happen in my life through prayer and persistence and effort that would allow those things to materialize.

4:56So you said, faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. Will you explain that just one level deeper to me? Yeah. When you think about your life and you go through things you hope for, you know, I remember when I was 27, I wanted to get married and have kids. By the time I was 30, I had this whole plan. It's different than a plan.

5:26Like a plan is the thing that you come up with, but the substance of things hopeful is like, you're just not really sure how this is going to happen. Like when I was raising the fund for Cherry Rock, I knew what my plan was. I knew I was going to go meet a lot of people and have a lot of meetings, but I wasn't sure exactly how it was going to come together. And that, that gap, that emptiness of, of how that's the faith part. And then on the evidence of things not seen is like, well, I didn't see it. But when it does come to fruition, this is proof that faith is the reason why this happened. And I have a couple of stories around that. We were getting very close to our target. And I wasn't sure if we were going to exceed the target or not.

6:23But there was this is when you were this is when you were fundraising for cherry rock fundraising for cherry rock and It was not clear if we were gonna get past a hundred million and we wanted to raise at least 150 and I was Praying and we were doing all the things you were having the meetings. We were following up with people and I said well, all right We just have to have some faith like we're doing everything that we can And I remember going to church and sitting in the service and our pastor gave this wonderful story about how this woman prayed for a certain amount of money to start a company and she actually exceeded that goal and received that money. And I said, I'm just going to pray for a certain number. And I'm just going to have some faith that somebody shows up and gives us that number.

7:23And I remember talking to my partner about us that, you know, say that I went to church. I prayed for this number. And she's like, yeah, well, we got this one LP. They're going to come in. And this is the number. So that's not the higher number. I'm praying for this higher number. He said, well, I'm not sure that's going to happen. I wasn't either. Two weeks later, they called and said, we have some good news. Please come in and meet with us. And I go into the meeting and sure enough, you're like, we were really impressed with what you're building. We're gonna give you 50% more than the number that you prayed for. They didn't even know I prayed for that number. And so I'm sitting, I'm so happy, Molly. I am like, this is beyond. I had no comprehension of how that happened. But as I sat there, I was reminded of the power of prayer. I had no idea. I said, this is the gap. God, you gotta fill this gap.

8:22And here's the evidence now of the thing not seeing. I didn't know where it was going to come from. But that commitment pushed us to our target. And then we were able to exceed our target because of it. So I don't know if that helps the description of it. No, it's such a perfect example. And it's exactly the kind of conversation I want to have with you today. I want you to actually like take me back and tell me where this comes from for you.

8:52I grew up in West Side of Detroit and in Detroit it was a community. We didn't always have much, but we always had enough of everything that we needed and I was made to go to church every Sunday. But going to church was the point of them keeping us in the church was not like punishment. And there were times in my childhood that it felt like it because it was like, oh, I'd rather go do this. I'd rather go do that.

9:21but it was teaching us the importance of standing for something and being grounded in something. And as I got older and went to college, I was on my own. I left Detroit to go to Philadelphia. I went to Penn undergrad and I didn't know anybody but I found the gospel choir and I'm not a good singer. I can like hold a note barely as an alto so I would not acknowledged that I'm a singer, but I joined the choir because I said, if I don't have a home anywhere, I can at least find a home here. And it was the first time that I realized like all those weeks of going to church and listening, it did sink in that if even if you're ever alone, you always have. My God.

10:13And it got me through my freshman year of college because I joined that choir and then was able to make friends through that and many other places. And it gave me a foundation that I could carry with me anywhere. So having a life with Christ and having a foundation of faith and a relationship with God has really helped me stay grounded and gotten me through some of the toughest times and important moments in my life.

10:42And it sounds like I loved your importance of standing for something and being grounded in something. And it sounds like it's a relationship with God. It's also a community that grounded you. And then I hear behind that, too, like a set of values and maybe principles like the importance of standing for something. Sounds like your grandmother and your parents like maybe role model that for you. Oh, yeah. On the community side.

11:12especially when we were growing up, we never really had much, but there were people on the block who had less than us, and so Grammy would like make an extra play and say, take this plate down the street, give it to this person. Or when we would pass the offering plate at church, like we should always put something in, even though I knew we didn't have a whole lot. Like, no matter what we would tie, we would give, and those things would come back.

11:40Like that commitment, that decision to give and commit, it would come back cause somebody sent us a plate. Somebody gave us something when we needed it. So the demonstration of community was not just here's church and here's the Bible, why you should study it. It was about helping other people in their lives. And that was the demonstration of how God showed up and God created community for us.

12:08And that's what they stood for that was a value that I was taught we were also taught to Not let other people influence you because the negative forces of life and you could end up talking to the wrong people in the wrong circles if you were grounded in a purpose and a meaning I was less likely to sway and to be swayed by other people's opinions and so Grammy of all people she was a strong woman and she had an opinion about everything. You might not want to hear it, but she had it. So she would give that opinion. And I admired her for that. Sometimes I was afraid because I didn't want to hear what she had to say. But it was almost always like something that I needed to hear, even if I didn't want to hear it. She was just that kind of person. And she really modeled the behavior of having a strong opinion and being convicted about what that opinion is.

13:05And I think that's helped me and people talk about where does your leadership come from? And a lot of my leadership comes from having that grounding, not being afraid to share my opinion, doing it from a place of love and caring. So I maximized the chance that someone would hear what I had to say. Yeah. First of all, I love hearing about your Grammy. She reminds me of you, which I'm sure is a compliment.

13:34I'm curious about how you have brought faith into your work and how it has shown up in your professional life. Hmm. It's been a journey. I would say my mom really has helped me with this, I call it like a tug of war of, of when you stand up and, and demonstrate your faith cause she lives it.

14:02like she mom runs a nonprofit and it's to help homeless people and you know and at the same time they minister to people but it's not like they don't have church there they just talk to people and through that they connect and watching her build that nonprofit helped me see over the course of my career how do i really represent who i fully am and one of the earliest moments where i did that was when i was at task rabbit I talked about my faith in a one-on-one conversation with someone, he was a person of faith too, but different than mine, not Christian something else. And he came back and he said, you know, we should start an interfaith group at the company. And I was like, a what? And he's like, yeah, what do you think? And I was like, and I'm CEO of the company. And I said, sure, why not? And we started the group and people were so happy.

15:00We had lots of members join. They were coming in, people representing different faiths. Like it was this amazing, amazing story of how people of different faith can come together and just talk and share and be happy that they can be out with their faith. It's like one of the things like the LGBTQ plus community like has a struggle with coming out. I have to say that sometimes Christians we struggle.

15:29With being out especially in Silicon Valley where we don't want to be judged. We don't want to be critiqued We want to fit in and we don't want people to think that we're not we don't believe in science because we go to church Right and you can believe in science and go to church and both of those things can be true And so that early experience of seeing that and watching that community come together was incredible and after that George Floyd happened and that group really helped connect and allow for stories to be shared. And remember, we were all doing COVID. And so it was all virtual. But because we had that grounding and that footing as a company and as a team, like people could open up and share the trials and the experiences and the emotions and everything that they were going through around that time. And so I share that memory because when I look back, I was like, oh, yeah, create the group.

16:29In hindsight, it was one of the most powerful things we did for the company. Yeah. So TaskRabbit was actually pretty, not late in your career, but not the beginning. And that means through your whole career at Google, you didn't talk about your faith at all before that? I don't think I talked about it in large groups. And I went to church on Sundays and I was a person of faith and I would come back the next Monday and so what did you do this week you know we went to church but I never really talked about what I did there what I learned. I remember working some Sundays when I was at Google and feeling guilty about it thinking oh this is supposed to be my day of rest but here I am working at this company because we're growing really really fast and I remember even earlier than my time at Google being in roles where

17:27I would work and not go to church and not, you know, set aside my time with God because I wanted to be successful and I didn't want to let people down. By the time I became the CEO, I could set the schedule and I could set the tone for what was expected. I wasn't asking you to believe what I believe, but I wanted you to respect my time and what I believed. And I felt like then I had the platform, the ability, the power to really do it and to say, I'm not available on Sunday mornings. And if we wanna have a call, we can do it after 2 p.m. on Sunday, but not after five, because that's when we have family dinner. Saying some of those things when you're the employee was harder to do, admittedly. And it helped me too, because once I had kids,

18:25The same thing happened where I had to set time in boundaries for spending time with my children. It's easier to do when I was CEO of the company. I know that it seems like your faith has been really central to who you've been as a leader. And I've heard you say, for example, that it really comes to life when you're having hard conversations with someone. So will you just tell some stories or give me some examples of how this part of you has played into you as a leader?

19:04One of our values at Cherry Rock is that we leverage our faith as much as our intellect and we had our values in a version of our pitch deck when we were fundraising and I sent it to someone I dearly care about and trust and it was before we officially started the fundraising process and I wanted feedback and he said to me he's like you should be careful using this Language is one of your values and I said why is that came up with those values? It was a representation of who I am to your point about being a leader was a representation and so some people might think it's more of a biblical thing and and You're not an impact fund and you're in fun that's going to generate returns and you don't want to turn people off and I was shocked and I had to really sit down and think about

19:56Whoa, wait, I do believe we leverage our faith as much as our intellect. I think both of those things go together. I want to raise this fund. I don't want to turn people off, but this is a part of who I am. And so I struggled in the first, you know, probably a few months of fundraising to define like how I was going to talk about that value if it came up as a question.

20:24And eventually I started giving you the scripture that I gave you at the top of this conversation. And people would wow at it and say, oh, okay, that's interesting. And then I would say, somebody took a chance on you. That person had faith. Somebody took a chance on me. That person had faith. We are taking chances. Like we're investing at Series A company. We have no idea this business is gonna go from 3 million to zero or 3 million to 300 million. We don't know.

20:54we have done all the data, we have done all the analysis, but we are still making a bet. So what's the difference between making a bet and having faith? Kind of the same thing, except I forgot behind my bet, you know, it's not like Las Vegas. So it's just like that to me was a big important moment for how I was going to lead this firm, how we were going to hire people.

21:21And in the process, I said, you know what? And if people don't want to invest in Cherry Rock because we have this value, then we weren't meant to take their money. We're just going to go get our money from other people and make a whole lot of money for those people who had faith in us. How did people react to that? You know, it resonated and it connected and it taught me a lot about how to talk about spirituality and faith. Like you don't just go in and say spirituality and like people get it.

21:51It's like, well, wait, you have to connect it to something people can relate to. Well, no one is hit wherever they are by themselves. No man is an item. So somebody took a chance on you, right? And you could think that, oh yeah, this person, wow, yeah, you're right. Okay. And then once you have that connection, people can see why it's important. And I wasn't trying to be defensive.

22:21So it allowed for an open conversation and open discussion and as a result of that some really wonderful things happened. I ended up getting invited to a group of VCs who are Christians who meet and have regular dinners and activities together. I wouldn't have known that that group existed had I not talked about this and you know, and really embody an affirmation that I grew to use, which is that my work is my ministry. And a lot of people think about ministry as like I'm a pastor, you know, I'm part of a church community, but anything that you do can be a ministry. And so I think about what I'm doing now in my career. And this is going back from the interfaith group at TaskRabbit to today. It's like, actually no, no.

23:15My work is my ministry. That's what this is. And it's a ministry that generates great returns and we invest in great companies. And that's why we're here. That's why I'm here. That's what we do. Yeah. Well, I was going to ask you that because you talked about your mom's work and how you see it as such a direct translation of your faith and your values. Talk a little bit more about that idea of a ministry. And how do you think about this coming to life in your work?

23:45For me, it comes down to how do I show up? And I show up with a sense of meaning, a sense of purpose, and a sense of knowing that I don't have all the answers figured out. And it's how I react to, wow, we raised $172 million. That was not all me. That was a lot of faith, a lot of prayer, a lot of other people who believed in me.

24:16and never take that for granted. And then when we have struggles, we lost the deal, we didn't win, we were struggling to hire this person, they said no, they rejected us. Oh wait, that's also part of the story. That's part of the testimony because someone else is gonna benefit from that someday. And so part of going through the journey of work, the successes and the struggles isn't just about me and what I can accomplish on my own, it's about how what I do is a testimony for other people. That's what makes it a ministry. And so, of course, a lot of people gave me advice when I was raising my fund. And now people come to me and say, hey, do you have any advice? I actually had a call this morning with someone who was raising a fund and said, do you have any advice? And so I was able to spend 30 minutes telling her all the horrible things that happened in my process.

25:11at the time I probably I wondered why is this happening to me? Well, it's a lesson that I can then pass on to someone else. So that's a testimony like I didn't know that I was supposed to deliver that message. I just went through life. And now you have all these stories that become a real potentially life changing message for somebody else. So I want to take you back to sort of this idea of coming out of the Closet about your faith. But you and I did a fireside chat a couple of months ago and I didn't even ask you about your faith. But someone in the audience did and you said, thank you for asking. No one ever does. Why do you think that that is? I believe that people are worried about, they don't ask because they don't want to offend anyone.

26:26And I, so that's one reason. That's one potentially one reason. I don't want to be, I don't want to offend you if I'm not a person of faith. The second one is, is people have lived experiences with their faith journey and not all of them are positive. And so maybe they had a terrible experience in the church or somewhere around their faith journey that really turned them off.

26:51So they don't ask because they don't want to live that part of their life anymore. And they don't want to talk to you about it, especially if you had a good experience. And then the third reason is just being judged, right? You have so many reasons to not bring it up. And there's so many other questions you can ask that you just don't ask the question. You just don't even go there. So I'm curious if there's someone listening that like...

27:16you know, has a faith life that's that's central to who they are, but feels like they can't bring it into professional spaces. Like what would you tell them? I would tell them to just pray about it and pay attention to God's moments to introduce it because they may feel like I can't introduce it, but God knows that there is a way if that's what they want.

27:45and just allow for the space to be filled by God to lead them in the right direction to do it. I remember sharing my faith over and again with somebody, even with my team. And they all know I go to church. We all have different versions of faith on the Cherry Rock team. And we were getting ready to go out for our first AGM and it was in person. It was first time we were sort of presenting the fund to all of the LPs who've committed. We had the founders who had, we had invested in backstage and we're getting ready to start. And someone on the team was like, let's pray before we go out there. And I was like, and I would, I didn't ask. And then we all got held hands and she said a prayer. And then we went and we had an amazing thing happen. And so I don't think we've,

28:44talked about faith, I don't think I've introduced it, but somebody else was like, let's pray. So even just showing up as a person of faith, not bragging about it, but just being who you are is an example in a way that you might not even appreciate right now is what I was saying with that person. Okay, I have sort of a slightly different question to ask you, but it's something someone said to me recently and I can't stop thinking about it, which is someone said to me that they think that a lot of people have replaced religion with work. Do you see that? Does that resonate with you? I can see how your soul sense of being is to, especially if you're a founder, give birth and bring life to this company.

29:42so many people think you can't do it. Like all the VCs who said no until somebody said yes. All the customers you tried to sell your product to said no until somebody said yes, right? You can almost develop a God-like complex of like, well, if I went through all of this and this thing is still happening, I must be something special. I must be, right? And so, and then I get people to follow me and boy, now my company has 5,000 people, 10,000 to 50,000 people and it's all, That's the religion. The religion is what we're building, what we're selling and look how it's impacting people's lives and changing people's lives and making the world a better place. Yes, I can see and people might say that that's the definition of a religion. But there's one thing about my religion that I believe, which is that after I'm done here on this earth, there's something more for me

30:42that whatever I'm doing is not just about me and I'm not sure that I go to work everybody who goes to work like a company is not preparing heaven for me no that I don't think so I don't think so so it's different but I can see how especially in the founder community there's a bit of that religion that you have to have especially when it's in the early days and you're trying to when, and you're trying to get it out there. You have to have some real commitment that could mirror a commitment to a faith or to a religion. Yeah, and I think part of what people are saying is that it's where folks derive meaning and a sense of identity. Do you know what I mean? Because part of what I hear you saying is like, I know my life is valuable.

31:36separate from my work. My work is part of that, but I have this inner clarity about what I am here for and what is waiting for me. And I think part of what I hear when people are like, work might have replaced religion for some set of people is that they have invested their whole being and sense of meaning into work. And then work lets you down, you know, that's right. And I feel you have a language for suffering and sort of like that the struggle is part of the purpose. What do you think happens when people don't have that? Yeah. So thank you for articulating another way to look at this issue. Yes, if you bank all your meaning into your work, whoa, if work lets you down,

32:28You get fired, you leave, the company goes under, or you decide you don't like it anymore. Wait, now I don't have a sense of purpose, I don't have a sense of meaning. That is a horrible place to be. And my reaction is, that's why it's not healthy to attach your sense of meaning to what's on this earth, like what's here right now. I have two kids and I love them so much, but my high schooler is gonna go to college in three and a half years. I can't attach my whole sense of meaning to her, because she's gonna have her own life someday. And if I'm sitting around waiting on her to show up, she barely responds to my text messages now. It's a wrap. It's not happening, right? So I think, I want people to think about,

33:27what's a greater purpose and chris my husband always talks about having community and beyond your work that you do every day is there a community that you're a part of that you can serve that you can give back to because that adds to a sense of meaning and a sense of purpose. I'm not saying go to church and become a Christian in order to have purpose. That's not what I'm saying. But having a community, I'm involved in this, I love mentoring kids, so I'm going to go do that. I love teaching pickleball. I'm going to go do that. Something that allows you to connect with other people outside of your work.

34:06creates a sense of meaning and purpose beyond the thing that you spend most of your waking hours doing and I think allows all of us to open up to the fact that the sum is greater than the parts and that we are here for more than just one thing. I love that.

34:26I am curious, like, just as a final thought, like, how it feels to talk about this so openly and a little bit, like, what are your hopes or fears as this conversation goes out into the broader world? I love it. When I developed the affirmation, my work is my ministry, I wanted to have more opportunities to talk about faith. I am excited for whoever this podcast touches and leads them in whatever direction God wants them to go in and just causes them to take that first step. I hope that it becomes a testimony for all of the people who are supposed to hear it. And I don't have any fears anymore. This is who I am. This is fully who I am. And I love being able to share that part of me.

35:27with whoever wants to listen. Yeah. Well, I loved this, Stacy. I really loved getting to know this part of you more and just it really taught me a lot listening to you talk about what it's meant in your life and how you think about sort of who you are on this earth. I'm going to be thinking about this for a long time. So thank you so much for making time to do this. Thank you. Thank you, Molly. This was fun. This was really fun. Wow.

36:04That was such a cool, interesting conversation with Stacey. I think I'm going to be processing that one for a while. And I do just want to name that like, I'm not religious. I was not raised religious. So there was a lot of words that Stacey used where I had to say, what do you mean by that? You know, because testimony and ministry and all these things, I think probably do make sense to someone that is Christian immediately and they don't immediately connect for me. But then as soon as I asked a question or heard her explain it, like the underlying concept and the sort of what it meant to her really resonated and it felt so universal. And one of the things that I was really

36:53thinking about as she was talking in terms of like what her faith has done for her both in life and at work. And so many of the examples she used were just this higher sense that there's a reason when things are hard or that there's just a reason why things happen and that God for her is a way of understanding that the struggle has a purpose, you know.

37:19I think it sounds a lot like faith for her has let her be much more okay with uncertainty and not knowing in the moment and just trusting that things will turn out. And that is a powerful thing. And I also really loved this thing she talked about, her work as a ministry. And again, that's not a word that I...

37:45would use every day or know really even the deepest like what it means to to folks that are Christian but um that resonated too in the sense that she really seems like she's come to understand her work as having a higher purpose and um just maybe doesn't always know exactly what that higher purpose is but but you know that she's grounded in that idea of service to others and that her story and her work is in service of others and that is It's just so powerful to have this compass, you know, to have this thing that when times are hard or when you're wondering why or when you're feeling stuck or uncertain just tells you that it's all gonna be okay, but also just that there's a reason. So yeah, I'm gonna keep processing that one. So much to learn from Stacy and so grateful. All right, talk to you all soon.

38:48Work Life is a production of Ted and Pushkin Industries. This episode was produced by Isaac Carter. Ban Ban Shang is our story editor. Mixing by Hans Dale Shee. Ted's executive producer is Daniela Ballerazzo. Constanza Gallardo is the executive producer for Pushkin. Special thanks to Roxanne Hilash, Valentina Bohanini, Laini Lat, Tansika Sungmanivong, and Ashley Murphy.

39:15If you like the show and want more, come join the discussion on my sub-stack lessons. I'm Molly Graham. Thanks for listening.