Ed Moy's Intro

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Today on the servant leadership podcast, we hear from Ed Moy, trusted adviser to President George W. Bush and former

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director of the US Mint. From helping lead a presidential transition to overseeing national coin production

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during 9/11 and managing record-breaking demand during the 2008 financial crisis,

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Ed shares what servant leadership looks like when pressure is at its highest. Raised in a Chinese family restaurant by

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immigrant parents, Ed shares how early lessons in stewardship and integrity shaped how he led on the global stage.

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Always with a mindset to build up others and leave things better than he found them. If you're interested in what real

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servant leadership looks like at the highest levels of government, this one's for you, Ed. Thank you so much for

Welcome Ed Moy

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joining us on the servant leadership podcast. Well, you're very welcome, Chris. and that great introduction uh

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that preceded this uh won't earn you any free samples from the United States Mint. So, how does somebody become the

Ed's Journey To Become The Director of The U.S. Mint

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director of the US Mint? You know, it's interesting. Uh there are uh there have

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been 40 mint directors in our country's history. Uh the mint was established in 1792. So, it was one of the very first

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parts of government. And uh there's been uh like I said 40 and we each each of us

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have come uh from very different uh walks of life. Uh early on it was

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Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson who agreed uh to ask David Brittenhouse

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probably the foremost scientist in uh in uh our early country uh to become the

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first mint director. uh and it's ranged from uh my friend Philip Deal who was

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Bill Clinton's mint director who came from the Senate uh so he uh understands

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his legislative history of how do you get things done uh to me which is uh

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pretty much of a business person who is uh good at strategy and uh joined the

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Mint at a very critical time uh where uh initially my job was to you know help

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improve them but also navigate uh growing electronic transactions and

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their impact on cash, but it ended up being uh one of the people at the table

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during the financial crisis advising Hank Pollson. Wow. Uh your background is

Ed's Private Sector Experience

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so interesting because you've led in the private sector, you've led now in the public sector. Uh talk a little bit,

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just give our audience a little bit of background of your private sector experience before jumping into the mint.

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Oh, sure. Uh happy to do so. Uh so I um

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uh my first job out of college was with the Blue Cross and Blue Shield uh which

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is a major health insurer and uh I focused on the uh plan that was in Wisconsin and uh quickly uh went through

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the management training program and uh ended up uh in an area that not many

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people knew about back then which was uh managed care. uh and that ends up being

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uh uh the HMO industry which is probably the predominant way that most people uh

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get their health care today. Uh you know so I've done that and uh after my first

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stint of public service uh I rotated out and became an adviser to a private

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equity firm uh one of the major firms on Wall Street that focused on um on

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healthcare investments. And so I've had a wide variety there. And then uh I've

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since then I've been uh an officer or director of uh several public companies

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including um I'm an adviser to uh one of the largest North American commercial drone

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companies uh which is called Dragonfly. Um I'm also uh a director of a company

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that uh uh does um waste to energy uh

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you know taking plastics and converting them to uh a certain type of diesel fuel

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that burns very very cleanly. So I have a wide variety of interests in in the private sector. So So you made a jump at

Expectations and Experience In The Public Sector

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some point to the public sector working with the White House, working with the US Mint. Uh I'm sure you had all kinds

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of expectations going in uh good and bad and and now now you've kind of seen both

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sides. What were your expectations going in and what were some of the differences? Yeah, so I've had uh two

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stints in the public sector. Uh my first one was right. Uh so what caused me to

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leave my career at Blue Cross and Blue Shield was I got a call from the White House and from the Department of Health

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and Human Services and uh President uh George HW Bush uh was elected and asked

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uh his friend uh L Sullivan who is the head of Morehouse Medical School to head

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up the uh Department of Health and Human Services. and he was looking around for someone to

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um head up the office that regulated uh managed healthcare organizations like

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HMOs and uh so it was an area that he was unfamiliar with and something that I

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was uh involved with at the very beginning of that industry and so at the tender age of I think I was 31 years old

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when I uh ended up becoming um head of that regulatory office uh you know So uh

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that was a whole story in itself and all the learnings I had to do transitioning from the private sector to the public

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sector. Um uh as an add-on to that uh it

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was the idea of uh Bush 41's administration to integrate uh HMO

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options for the elderly under the Medicare program and for the

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disadvantaged uh which would be under the Medicaid program. uh both uh you know so when I reflect back and look at

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the Medicare part C which I'm on right now um I helped birth that and so it's

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kind of strange to be uh involved in the very seeds of that program which have

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now become very very common place uh but my second stint in public service started with the um uh Bush transition

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Bush 43 George W Bush uh as you know that was a truncated uh time uh because

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of the contested election. And so we really had about onethird the time that a normal uh president-elect has to

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figure out how to uh take control over government. And so the challenge uh that

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I thought was very interesting is uh if you had all that time, it's really hard to do. But if you only have one-third

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the time, uh how do you end up doing that? uh the president uh uh elect uh

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liked what I was doing and asked me to come with him uh when he was sworn in uh

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to become one of the very first White House staffers. Uh so uh my initial stint which was about five and a half

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years uh I helped advise him on who he should appoint to the top 4,000

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positions in government. So the way that our government is uh structured is that

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when a president wins an election they should be able to implement the agenda that that they won on and as a result

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all the senior leadership positions in government uh get to be appointed by him

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uh or her. Uh so um and my job was to advise the president on uh who you

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should make as surgeon general or the head of OSHA or the the secretary of

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labor or secretary of education uh that type of thing. So I did that was my first stint. That was five and a half

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years. And when I adopted my first daughter, uh the uh uh president asked

Becoming The U.S. Mint Director

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me to give him a list of things that would give me more of the lifestyle that I was seeking as I was trying to be a

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good father uh to this uh young girl that I had adopted. And I gave him a

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list and he gave me a ring saying, "You're going to become the next mint director." And it was just pretty

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amazing to me uh becoming the mint director because uh you know I was the

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son of immigrants uh growing up in our family's restaurant. Uh anyone who knows

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the Chinese immigrant story and restaurants uh kids man the cash register because the family trusted

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family uh to oversee the money. And uh you know as a bored 10-year-old kid

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started a coin collection. Fast forward 30 years later, uh, 40 years later, I'm

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head of the organization that made those coins only in America.

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What an amazing story. I I mean, there's so much to unpack there as as you were

Characteristics Required For Selecting National Leaders

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in a role advising uh the president on what potential people to put into roles.

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You're looking at leadership qualities that you're looking at leaders in a different way than most people. You're

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trying to understand character, not just effectiveness. You're trying to understand and we talk a lot about servant leadership. How did you even

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navigate those conversations? Yeah, that's a really good question, Chris. And you know, uh, every president

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does it differently. Uh, George Washington uh, did a very good job uh, trying to set the president for future

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pres uh, for future presidents to follow all the way through my boss uh, George

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W. Bush. And uh I've been involved tangentally on some of the uh Trump

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transition stuff. Um and I can say uh

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choosing people is a reflection of what the president's priorities and culture

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wants to be. And George W. Bush was very clear. uh he wanted people with uh

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extensive experience in the areas that they were being appointed to uh under

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the belief that the best predictor of future performance is past performance. So he didn't want to take a winger on

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someone who's never done it before. Uh he wanted someone with extremely long successful track record. Uh he also was

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very clear in that he wanted people who played well in the sandbox together. uh

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uh while uh many of our appointees uh were superstars in themselves uh they

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weren't the uh primadana that um uh

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whose ego drives the organization. What we were looking for were uh people who played extremely well on a team and

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cooperated uh to get things done. And then the last thing is uh what many

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presidents uh look for and that is um some loyalty or resonance with the

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policies and philosophies and ideas uh the president wants to implement in

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their particular areas. And so it was my job really uh when I interviewed and uh

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boy, you know, I've done uh uh like thousands upon thousands of interviews

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uh was to kind of figure it out uh uh how well those people met that criteria.

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And in the end uh uh the president would also ask us to uh take you know those

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three were the priority and within that he expected uh diversity among the

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candidates not in a DEI uh you know um

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uh a kind of fattish kind of way. uh but uh he would you know take a look at uh

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my recommendations on chief financial officer for the department of energy and

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he would say you mean to tell me that there's not a Hispanic or or an African-American or a woman who uh has a

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CPA who's had audit experience uh on the energy side that uh isn't qualified. I

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mean uh you don't have a complete list. go back and uh make sure I have choices.

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Yeah. I mean, the the pressure in in purpose in your decision-m is

How To Make Good Decisions

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unbelievable. I mean, I had a lot more hair and it was a lot less gray than it is now, Chris. But but it is interesting

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like from from managing the cash register at a family business to now managing billions of dollars of national

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currency and taxpayer dollars as well. uh how did you even what led you to be

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able to make such solid decisions? And I know there's decisions you probably wish would have changed, but uh how did you

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navigate that? Yeah. Uh another good question and I think the uh simplest

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answer, it's a culmination of experiences

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uh and decisions that I've made my entire life, you know. So the only way you uh you make good decisions is a you

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have mentors that uh teach you uh how to uh make good decisions. uh but you also

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make a lot of bad decisions along the way and you learn from those and uh in

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the end um the United States Mint even though it's one of the first parts of our government when our country was

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founded and has this great legacy in the end it's just like any other uh business

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organization u you know uh you have to in our case our product is money uh and

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our our the reason why we exist is to make sure that we have enough uh

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circulating uh coinage uh to keep America's economy going. Uh but then you

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also have uh a secondary um reason why we exist by law and that is to make

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precious metal bullion for financial investors. And then uh with any excess capacity that we have, we end up making

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collector's versions of the first two uh products that were mandated. Uh but uh

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also during my time you so it wasn't just uh how do we make money more

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efficiently and taking a look at the penny and is there a way we can make a penny for under a penny and asking those

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type of questions. But uh within the first year of my tenure uh as mint

Dealing With The Financial Crisis

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director uh the financial crisis started happening and then you see um the number

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of financial transactions in the country start to shrink because the economy is

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beginning to shut down. And when it uh does that then you have logistical

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problems like um you have uh certain amount of employees who make circulating

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coinage. If you don't need that much uh right now then you have excess uh u

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employees but if you uh rip them or lay them off uh that's a unique expertise.

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It's just not like there's a lot of coin makers uh uh in the United States. And

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then at the same time you have financial investors who are panicking and they want uh gold and silver and they want to

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get out of stocks and bonds and cash and plow it into something that is safer.

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And so our demand for gold bullion for example uh rose 700%. Uh the demand for

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silver bullion uh rose 500%. And then you have supply chain issues because

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it's not like I can go to Walmart and buy silver blanks uh to to end up making

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coins. And so all those are really uh interesting problems, but they're also

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uh challenges for the nation that if not done right, uh you contribute to

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economic calamity. Wow. uh even thinking about leading in your role during a financial crisis. Uh

Servant Leadership During Crisis

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what a lot of people talk to you about is money and you know and and it's one

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of those things where you talk about money all day and yet there's so much out of your control with the market and

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all of that kind of thing. Uh when you think through I've heard you talk a lot about integrity and stewardship and even

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aspects of servant leadership. Uh how did you see that play out at when you were director of the US Mint? Yeah, you

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know the uh what you mentioned uh those qualities are so important because many

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of these jobs in government uh whether it was uh me serving at the very

16:45
beginning and having to deal with uh the most devastating terrorist attack uh on

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US soil uh which was 911. And then uh I participated in forming the uh

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Department of Homeland Security which is the first cabinet department since 1949 when the Department of Defense uh uh was

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uh put together. There's no rule book. There's no professor. There's no uh

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research that has been done on how best to set up a new cabinet department especially to tackle uh terrorist

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attacks on US soil. Uh same thing with the financial crisis. We've had financial crisis in our country. Uh but

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the last one that uh uh even uh came close to I mean uh uh the worst

17:30
financial crisis we've ever had was the Great Depression. There's no one alive

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to advise me on what uh uh what they did in order to reorganize government to be

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able to tackle uh uh the Great Depression. Um and uh so uh with the

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lack of resources and plowing new ground, you have to rely on some of

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these intangible things uh like your integrity. Um what you believe is right

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and wrong, your your moral values uh going through this. Um you have to uh

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trust your instincts. You have to uh uh cultivate the people around you uh to

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help support you uh through these things because you're again plowing new territory that nobody else

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has. It is just so fascinating to think about all the the major global issues

Handling Wealth, Influence, and Success

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that you have had to think through in your role. Uh you know, and part of that is just because of the role you were in.

18:36
as as people listening are listening to you, they're probably thinking about the different pressures that they have on

18:42
their own life, right? And and how they deal with not global issues in most cases, but serious issues in their own

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life and and a lot of people talk about wealth and influence and view stewardship differently and and everyone

18:55
is idolizing in a way success. Uh how how do you think leaders should even be

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thinking about wealth, influence, what success means? How do you help teach people the right way to walk through

19:07
their their own scenarios? Yeah. Well, um you know, a very tough

19:13
question. Uh the uh the best way I know

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um how to answer that is um uh focus less on you the uh

19:30
utilitarian does this benefit me or not? uh how do I get out of it unscathed and

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get my reputation out? uh in in all my situations whether private

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sector and especially public sector uh it helps to think of I have temporary

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stewardship over this organization and my responsibility uh is

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uh to leave this organization better than I found it and to uh if I uh join

20:04
the organization I've embraced its mission and to do what I can to help it

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uh fulfill uh its mission. Uh and that's the great thing about public service is

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uh um you know certainly there are people around that are doing it because of ego or it's a stepping stone to

20:25
something else they want in the private sector and so on. I was really fortunate in the George W. Bush administration and

20:32
partially because I was in charge of hiring much of it. um uh I was surrounded by people who really cared

20:38
about the country, right? And uh in the end at the mint um uh uh it's just not

20:46
you know how can I be on TV and enjoy uh the state quarter launches and and that

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type of thing which were all enjoyable and uh I learned how to do media by uh

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being uh um in spotlight a lot but what was the primary driver for me is uh the

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mint's job is to make the economy uh run smoothly because if you don't get the money right? Countries fail and and the

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proof is all over the world, countries that don't do money right, uh their

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people suffer. And in the United States, uh especially with the US dollar and the

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importance that has all over the world, it's important to get that money right. And so I viewed my job as to execute the

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mission of the mint to the best of my ability and make sure that the people

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who help me do that understand what that mission is, that I equip them, that I

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encourage them, and that when I leave, my hope is gosh, the mint did its job

21:48
better than any other time, and its people were happy uh that Ed Moy was

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leading. And I I have heard from so many people that know you personally and speak of

Making Tough, Unpopular Decisions - Two Examples

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your high character, but also just from Yeah, that's because I paid them a lot of money, Chris. Also from reading

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stories about how you led. I I can't even imagine. Are are there situations where especially in financial crisis or

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other areas where you felt like you had to make some really tough decisions that was not a popular opinion? And if so,

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how' you how did you deal with that? Yeah. U again, another uh great question. Uh and you know I would say uh

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you know so I'll bring up two um examples uh that kind of illustrate what I uh just talked about. Uh one of them

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is I want you know so um uh under my tenure uh we were able to uh retrain a

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lot of the uh circulating employees to work on the uh bullion side as uh and

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and from that um we didn't have to uh lay people off uh when circulating

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demand uh went down. And at the same time, we upped uh our production of gold

23:05
and silver bullion uh to the point where um it was kind of a miracle that we uh

23:11
were able to uh uh improve the supply chain for us to be able to do it. And

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then we made record amounts of uh gold bullion uh and silver bullion coins. and

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and through all of that uh our employees really really um worked uh worked

23:32
extremely hard uh for the American taxpayer uh to the point where it was a grind. But in the end, what I'm proud to

23:39
say is when I joined the mint uh in 2006, uh one of the important surveys in

23:47
government uh that every agency takes and then we judge our performance based

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on it is the best places to work survey. And out of 217 parts of government when

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I joined the mint in 2006 we were 211 right at the very bottom. When I

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left even with all that hard work that we did at the Mint uh we jumped up to

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58. It was the largest jump in that survey of any part of government in the

24:20
history of that survey. And so I can look back saying, yes, we ran hard, but

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people felt like they satisfied this mission to help save the country's

24:31
finances during the second worst economic crisis in our country's

24:37
history. So uh uh you know, so that's uh uh one uh of how do you manage during a

24:44
tough time but yet improve morale when everyone's running ragged. Uh but the

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other two was when you take a look at the financial crisis uh uh in many ways

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uh it it wasn't this simple but uh um without doing a 45minute lecture on what

25:04
the options were uh you can basically break it down into a binary decision right uh you had uh all these uh

25:13
financial institutions that were uh on the verge of collapse uh then there was a liquidity crisis And if they were to

25:20
collapse, that would cause a worldwide depression. Not a recession, a worldwide

25:26
depression because of the influence of the United States uh and the US dollar

25:31
on the global monetary system. Uh but if you were to bail them out and save the

25:39
world from a uh a a deep depression um and smooth it out to maybe a long

25:47
recession instead, uh you would also be removing the um the punishment uh for

25:56
the people who got us into this position in the first place. And so on one hand

26:01
uh you could uh um punish the baddoers and plunge the world into a depression

26:07
and hurt nine billion people or uh you could uh take it easy on the

26:13
institutions that made all the bad decisions and smooth it out so that it didn't go into a depression but a uh a

26:22
milder recession. Right? Uh those are kind of unpleasant choices and uh what I

26:29
viewed is the secretary just like when I served the president, they deserve uh to

26:36
have um your very best advice and opinion regardless of what everybody

26:43
else was saying. uh and uh and I felt um

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that I had done my duty by by bringing that up uh and uh talking about the

26:55
moral hazard about uh doing the bailouts. Now at the same time uh the

27:01
secretary made his decision and then went to the president to get the president's approval and in the end uh I

27:07
had a choice of either supporting what we did or resigning uh versus uh uh some

27:15
appointees in other administrations would then stay in and then give

27:20
anonymous interviews in the press saying you know they went that way but I'm the only one who you know principally

27:26
disagreed and think it's the wrong that doesn't help anybody. Uh so uh

27:32
there's a certain culture in Washington especially under uh the George W. Bush

27:37
administration. We either saluted to the decisions and did our best to implement

27:42
them but if uh we found them uh to be uh too much for us uh it is honorable to

27:50
resign and let the president do what he wants to do. That is such a fascinating insight into

Advice To Leaders In Difficult Situations

27:58
the behind the scenes of how some of those things are decided on. What advice do you give to other emerging leaders

28:04
who are involved in trying to make an impact or trying to make tough decisions but feel overwhelmed by the different

28:10
challenges they're facing? Yeah. uh you know I can only talk from my own

28:15
experience and that is uh you really um

28:21
uh you know uh business schools can teach you the technical parts about

28:27
making a decision. Uh but the most important piece of that is your own uh

28:34
moral code and uh your own worldview. Uh

28:39
and uh you know so I would encourage emerging leaders to really seek out what

28:45
is your north star and uh from that uh allow your decisions to always be within

28:53
the spectrum of what you feel is the right thing to do. Yeah. Well, I've heard you talk a little

29:00
bit about being faithful in little things, uh, especially in great places of responsibility. Um, how do you help

29:09
teach that to other people? Well, uh, you know, I one, um, effective

29:17
way and it was how I learned was, uh, being mentored by

29:23
someone who has more experience than than you have. uh in the same field and

29:29
I was really fortunate in my very first job um uh you know it was it was

29:36
interesting I'll I'll just uh rewind the tape for 30 seconds and that is uh you

Ed's Christian Faith Journey and Influence

29:41
know uh I grew up in a family who had no experience with faith issues uh and in

29:50
college uh my senior year uh I came to the Christian faith and that's where I

29:56
that uh and that's where I made my commitment and that has for me been my northstar uh uh being able to seek out

30:05
uh what is right from uh the God that is described uh in the Bible and from there

30:14
uh so this gets into the mentorship uh so when I uh uh graduated from school

30:20
all my Christian friends say oh uh well your highest calling is to go into the ministry and And I'm going like, I'm I'm

30:27
kind of new at this. What is the ministry? Oh, that's becoming a pastor, a parurch worker, etc. And he said,

30:33
well, you know, I don't I kind of know what they do, but I don't have any of the I'm not gifted in that area. Uh I'm

30:41
really gifted in this issue of solving uh business problems. And they all said,

30:47
well, uh you know, good luck to you. um uh and maybe you can redeem your work by

30:54
sharing your faith at work and and that's why uh God will give you a

31:00
platform uh working for other companies. So I went into the workplace feeling

31:05
that was not right and that uh uh my job

31:11
was to again uh help you know join a company whose mission I agreed with that

31:18
was within the spectrum of what I believed was honorable to what God was doing. Health insurance protecting

31:25
people from financial calamity because of a heart attack or uh or or maternity.

31:31
Those are really important things. And how do I get that right? Because that helps people flourish, which is one of

31:37
the job tasks that God gives us in Genesis chapter 1. But no one else agreed with

31:45
me. when I went to new employee orientation,

Finding A Mentor - Critical Leadership Step

31:51
uh, our senior vice president of the unit that I was going to be in, uh, came

31:56
in and kind of did his thing about, you know, what his management style was and, uh, where he wanted to take the company,

32:02
etc. And I went, "Okay, that's nice. He's a good guy. I totally understand that." That Sunday, I saw him walk out

32:08
of church, the same church I was going to. So, I asked him, I went right up to him.

32:15
And I said, "Okay, I'm like five, you know, eight levels below you. You don't

32:20
know me. Uh, but uh, you know, I was in on your orientation uh, remarks. Uh, I

32:27
have to ask you if you're going to this church, are you a Christian?" And he said, "Yes, I am." And I said, "And how

32:33
long have you been uh, a Christian?" And he said, "You know, for about 30 years."

32:38
And he said, "So, does that encompass your time in the health insurance industry?" He said, "Yeah, I've been in

32:45
the health insurance industry all that time." I said, "Would you mind getting together with me and sharing the lessons

32:53
that you've learned, both good and bad, trying to live out your faith in the

32:59
environment of health insurance?" And I will say that was the single most important thing that

33:06
supercharged my uh leadership abilities and was the foundation of many of the

33:14
interesting things that I've been able to do since then. Wow. And and it literally was just you making the effort

33:22
to go and have that conversation which then shaped the way you view a lot of your professional work experience after

33:28
being mentored. So yeah, hopefully hopefully people can take that away as

33:33
just a next step is to go find somebody. Uh what if somebody feels like there is nobody that that they're connected to?

Advice For How To Find A Mentor

33:40
How how would you go about encouraging somebody to find someone? No pressure. Well, it you know it also helps to um be

33:48
part of organizations that uh intersect uh with this world. And uh you know you

33:55
and I met at the uh New Canaan Society's uh national uh conference and uh New

34:02
Canaan uh ends up attracting uh a lot of men uh who are in similar situations and

34:09
one of the reasons why you and I are talking is uh we felt that we had some uh chemistry and some like interests and

34:16
uh uh so I would encourage people to be connected with uh similar organizations

34:22
you know just even on the political front, even though uh politics uh most

34:28
people know me for my public service, but that's really only been onethird of my career. Twothirds of my career have

34:35
been in the private sector. Uh but even on the public service side, uh when I

34:41
was um at the White House, which is the pinnacle of the executive branch, and

34:48
our constitution has three separate but equal branches of government. uh the legislative branch, Congress uh both the

34:54
House and the Senate is the other one and then the judicial branch and it helped for me to reach out to uh

35:03
Christians who were in both the legislative and judicial branches. Uh and you should know just uh even with a

35:09
little scratching on the surface on the um on the congressional side uh there's

35:15
an organization called Faith and Law. It was started by a bipartisan group of chiefs of staff uh who were wondering uh

35:24
what difference does it make being a Christian and how does that influence

35:31
how you advise your principal which is either uh a uh um House of

35:38
Representatives or or a senator. uh and how do you do your best job in uh in

35:44
helping them accomplish an agenda that uh benefits the entire nation. And so uh

35:51
faith and law and when I started uh the White House Christian Fellowship at that time uh we collaborated a lot uh

35:59
together with the speakers as well as uh the different um policy initiatives that

36:05
we were doing. Wow. Ed, I I think we're gonna have to have you back to talk

36:12
about some of this faith and work stuff at some point because this is just so fascinating. I've heard you talk in much

36:17
more detail on it, too. Um, before I let you go, though, I want to ask you 10

Ten Rapid-Fire Questions

36:22
rapidfire questions where you just say the first thing that comes to your mind, and there's no wrong answer.

36:30
All right. Who's the who's the first person you think of when I say servant leadership?

36:36
George F. Bush. Five words that most describe you.

36:42
Five words. Five words.

36:51
Humble with lots to be humble about. Taking a riff off of Winston Churchill.

36:58
I like that. All right. Favorite author or book? I am an avid reader and uh and

37:06
I read lots um so uh on

37:11
uh gosh I just I love both fiction and non-fiction

37:17
and history and I'm I just put it down as I love to read. Way longer answer

37:24
than you want. Perfect. Favorite movie then might be harder. Favorite movie? I

37:30
vary a lot, but uh you know, top on my list right now is the nine movies that

37:36
make up the Skywalker saga uh because I think it uh is a really special way to

37:42
bring up uh much broader issues of uh faith and honor and service uh etc. Wow.

37:50
Favorite food? Favorite food. Um so, as you can see, I'm not the smallest

37:56
Chinese guy you've ever seen. I enjoy food. Uh but I enjoy everything. So, uh

38:02
my um uh my passion is about authentic foods the way that they're supposed to

38:09
be done. So, I I like carbonara uh without cream in it. I like it made

38:14
exactly the way they make it in Rome. Wow. Love that. Favorite thing to do in your free time?

38:21
Spend time with my family. All right. What is a surprising fact about you?

38:27
I grew up in the restaurant. Uh, so I have cooked virtually all of our meals

38:34
um in our 43-year marriage. Wow, that's cool. Uh, favorite place you've been.

38:43
It would be a tie between the Amafi coast and Paris.

38:49
All right. Is there anywhere you want to go that you have not visited yet? I would love to just get lost in

38:57
Croatia, Montenegro, and uh you know, all those countries on that on that coast.

39:05
All right. And finally, what's the best advice you've ever gotten from my mentor? And that is uh to be faithful.

39:13
Trust in God. Great advice. Well, Ed, thank you so much for taking time to be with us and share some of your wisdom

Closing

39:19
with our audience. Thanks for having me, Chris. It was a lot of fun and uh yeah,

39:24
I'm open to doing it again. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Servant Leadership Podcast. If you

39:31
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