MILWAUKEE – Kim Marotta toiled as a litigator in the Wisconsin public
defender’s office for nearly 14 years.
But in the summer of 2004, the 38-year-old mother of four youngsters
gave up representing poor Milwaukee residents in court and jumped to
Miller Brewing Co.
There, she took on the newly created job of social responsibility
director, charged with revamping the company’s community investment
program.
In May, Miller unveiled REACH – which stands for Responsibilty,
Employment, AIDS/HIV, Cultural Diversity, Heritage initiatives – as the
new brand for its corporate giving efforts.
At a reception at the company Frederick J. Miller Pub, the company
handed out $1.8 million in grants to 35 community organizations. The
brewery also announced other partnerships, in-kind donations and
volunteer efforts by employees.
“Ultimately, there can be no choice between doing the right thing for
the community and the right thing for society,” Marotta said at the
time.
WisBusiness.com Editor Brian Clark interviewed Marotta recently in her
Milwaukee office.
Brian Clark: It’s been about a year since you made the switch from
the public defender’s office to Miller. How has it gone?
Kim Marotta: It’s great and I feel like I’ve been here a long time.
I loved the public defender’s office and I was there for almost 14
years. I’d become kind of entrenched in it.
When I first started there, I went thinking that I loved to litigate.
I’d been working for a personal injury firm in the summers and I
thought I’d like to do some personal injury work. I knew I wanted to be
in the courtroom, so I figured I’d stop over at the public defender’s
office and gain some great experience and then move on.
But I got so engrossed in what you are doing that it is hard to leave.
When you enjoy a job that much, you think why would I want to do
anything else? It filled a lot of gaps for me.
Clark: Did you spend your whole career there?
Marotta: Yes, I went there right out of law school.
Clark: You have four children, how have you balanced family
with your career?
Marotta: One of the major benefits about working for the
state is that there was flexibility that allowed me to stay there and
even be promoted and move into different positions.
I got promotions even when I was pregnant, so my job was family
friendly. That made me somewhat indebted because the agency went out of
its way to work with me. There are other working moms there who feel
the same way.
The great thing about our public defender system is that it’s extremely
well run. It’s a great place for a woman to work who wants to have a
family. It’s a good job and I think Wisconsin is unusual in that
respect. When I last looked, the average time people worked in the
public defenders office was 10 years.
Clark: What made you want to make a change?
Marotta: Eventually I was helping run the Milwaukee office,
while having to be in Madison on some Fridays. Then I was promoted up
to the Madison office when I was pregnant with our fourth baby. I
commuted back and forth to Madison from our home in Mequon after she
was born. I felt it was a job I could do with kids, despite the
commute.
When I took the job, we thought we would move to Madison. My husband
Marc had taken a job with the governor (as head of the Department of
Administration).
After Marc had about six months under his belt, he said we could handle
commuting. And I was able to work part of the week in Milwaukee. We
didn’t really want to leave our home, which we had built, and our lives
over here. Eventually, that drove me to look for another job. With four
kids, I couldn’t do the commuting and I began to look elsewhere.
Marc still commutes though. He gets up early to miss the commute
traffic and comes home after rush hour. Now he has an intern who drives
him back and forth so he can do phone messages and Blackberry stuff.
He’s made it work, but it wore me out.
Clark: Do you think he’ll stay the entire term?
Marotta: I don’t know. If he were a woman, it would be all
mapped out. But he’s committed to the job, so I don’t know.
Clark: You were a business and marketing major at Marquette,
how did you make the jump to law school?
Marotta: I wanted to work for United Airlines in marketing,
but they offered me a job as a flight attendant. I didn’t go to college
to do that. I figured I needed more schooling, so I went to law school
figuring that I eventually would come back to business. But I fell in
love with litigating.
Clark: Are there any similarities in your current job and
being a public defender?
Marotta: Actually, there are a lot. As a public defender, I
think I spent 50 percent of my time as what you would think of as a
traditional social worker. I was meeting with my clients, helping them
find jobs, working on alcohol and drug issues.
You couldn’t just be concerned about what happened only in the
courtroom. You needed to do everything you could to make sure they
didn’t end up back in court a year later. You wanted to help
rehabilitate them while their cases were going on. I knew a lot about
schools and community programs and organizations as part of my work.
Clark: Did you have any second thoughts or find any irony in
coming to work for a brewery, when many of your public defender clients
had alcohol problems?
Marotta: One of my jobs is to liaison with our
“Responsibility” initiative. At Miller, we really take very seriously
the responsible use of our products. To me, that goes hand-in-hand. It
certainly isn’t at opposite ends of the spectrum.
We support centers that deal with alcohol and drug problems. We also
support and work with the Boys and Girls Clubs in Milwaukee. They have
a program called Check 21 in which they talk to young people about the
importance of not using alcohol products until they reach 21. They go
on field trips, for lack of a better word, and visit convenience stores
and have someone try to buy alcohol. If a product is not sold, they
give that store a sticker.
I see our responsibility initiative as part of a continuous stream
recognizing alcohol issues and working to prevent youth access and
abuse.
Clark: How has the job changed since you took over?
Marotta: Right now, I’m spending about 50 percent of my time
on our upcoming 150th anniversary. And that’s been an absolute
privilege. That won’t continue once the event happens.
From the corporate and social investment standpoint it has changed in
that prior to me starting and prior to South African Breweries coming
on the scene, Miller looked at investing its communities in a much more
philanthropic manner.
The philosophy was to give a lot to everybody. That was terrific and we
were able to reach out to a lot of different groups and talk to those
different groups and have some impact.
What we do now is more focused. In corporate social investment, we look
at people and groups in our communities that challenge the dominant
ways of thinking and stereotypes and help bring a voice to those
individuals. We considered our business strategy and our business
needs. We then looked at the community and tried to marry those needs
together.
We asked “what is the community most concerned about?”
Before we gave out a lot of checks, but we didn’t know if the community
needed it or if it would have an impact. So we did an extensive survey
and asked employees and residents alike what were their top issues.
Overwhelmingly it came back that they wanted the creation of good,
family sustaining jobs. But we hadn’t really focused on that in years
past. Still, as a manufacturing company, we are all about bringing
family sustaining jobs to the community.
Clark: For example?
Marotta: We have a signature program we are retooling called
the Miller Urban Entrepreneur Series. We have set up seminars and a
mentoring and have dollars for individuals who want to start their own
entrepreneurial businesses.
We are trying to make this bigger. And we partner with groups top
create initiatives and jobs. We are also working with the Wisconsin
Women’s Business Investment Corp. In the past, we would have given them
$10,000 for their annual luncheon.
Now we are saying we want to not only support you, but be involved with
you. We have a member on their board. We have volunteers there. We want
to measure some impact and invest in your initiatives. We said “We love
your luncheon, but we do more at the grass-roots level.”
We invested $100,000 last year with United Way and their employment
initiatives and employment-focused non-profit
organizations.
Clark: How much money did Miller invest in the Urban
Entrepreneur program?
Marotta: One million dollars. We also have made a $25,000,
two-year commitment to the Milwaukee Public Market that opens in July.
That market will create 120 new jobs and 20 new businesses. It will
support first-time retailers. Everyone in that market will be a new
business.
Clark: What have you done with AIDS?
Marotta: We didn’t want to duplicate what others were doing.
We wanted to do something that was niche-defining. In Milwaukee, where
we spend 70 percent of our dollars, we have had strong connections with
Camp Heartland (for children with AIDS) and wrote out their second
check ever back in 1991 or 1992.
We were one of the first companies that got involved in the AIDS
Resource Center of Wisconsin about 20 years ago when it wasn’t the
thing to do to step up and talk about AIDS and HIV. We also have
supported Wisconsin AIDS fund.
We asked ourselves what else we could do with AIDS and we recently
invested with the Center for International Health run by Mark Anderson.
We invest dollars that train physicians here so that when they go over
to Africa, they train nurses, physicians and midwives to do what they
can to treat and do what they can in regards to people with AIDS.
As a company that is international and has some significant roots in
South Africa, it was an issue that we felt like we needed to stand up
as a company and make a difference when it comes to AIDS/HIV.
Clark: How long has Miller been part of SAB?
Marotta: Two-and-one-half years.
Clark: Is what you are doing unique for an American company?
Or are there other companies doing similar things?
Marotta: From what I’ve read and researched, corporate social
investment has its roots in Europe. Our counterparts in South Africa
have been engaged in it since the early 1970s. It is their way of doing
business and
thinking. When SAB came in, they brought that philosophy that you need
to
do what’s right for the company and the society.
I think what happens here, if you look at the giving, so many of the
dollars are given to the arts. That’s not so similar to what they do in
Europe. At the same time, we have not stepped away from the arts.
What we’ve done instead is what we’ve termed the “heritage initiative,”
which ties back to the company. If we are supporting an arts
organization, it needs to tie back to the company and the community.
So we have been name and title sponsors for practically as long as you
can remember for the Miller Lite Ride for the Arts, of the Christmas
Carol at the Repertory Theater, which had its roots at the Project
Miller Theater – what the Rep used to be called. We’re also sponsors of
the Lakefront Festival of the Arts, with the Rainbow Summers, which are
now called Live at the Center. So we are not walking away from the
arts.
We still spend a lot. But now we are really tied to where our
experiences are from our heritage perspective in things that make
Milwaukee and are tied to our beer.
Clark: Have you dropped anything or any groups?
Marotta: When we were owned by Phillip Morris, we were
focused a little more on domestic violence. We also gave a lot of money
to arts programs across the board. Domestic violence isn’t gone off the
table, because we support those efforts through the Miller Brewing
Company Fund. Employees chose domestic violence, at-risk youth and
hunger and they’ve invested more than $5 million there in the past five
years. Employees run that and it’s administered by a board of 17
employees. …
Clark: Are there any arts groups that have seen a reduction in
what they received?
Marotta: We weren’t involved last year with the ballet and
the Nutcracker. We need to talk to them so that can be part of our
heritage initiative. Some of the groups have not received the same
level of spending. We sponsored Ko’Thi, an African-American dance
group, for a long time and we are still interested in sponsoring them
from a cultural diversity standpoint. Things are done a little
differently. Our major effort is the Miller Lite Ride for the Arts,
where we spend we spend $175,000.
They had 8,000 bicyclists participate recently. Even if we don’t
directly support an arts group, perhaps it will benefit from money
raised in this and administered by the United Performing Arts Fund
umbrella group.
Clark: How much do you invest a year through corporate social
investment?
Marotta: A little over $6 million. In the past, we’ve been
quiet about that. But this May, we brought all of our grant recipients
in and we had an activity in our pub and presented the grants. The
different groups networked and we also invited other people from the
community in so they could see and get a feel where our concerns and
needs are.
We will do this three or four times a year. In September, we will
invite our employees so they can what kinds of opportunities there are
to volunteer. We are trying to be much more communicative in the ways
we spend our dollars.
Clark: Has the total amount of spending gone up under your
direction?
Marotta: To tell you the truth, I don’t know because we
didn’t keep very good track of our giving. We didn’t capture it.
Everyone had their own budget and did their own thing across the
company. We are now getting a handle on it. All I can do is tell you we
are getting better at measuring it.
Clark: Do you have a sense that it’s increasing?
Marotta: I’m trying to make that happen. There is support
from both our parent company and from our CEO to make sure that the
dollars we are spending are as significant and strong as ever.
Clark: What do you like most about your job?
Marotta: There’s not just one thing, but I like making a
difference. For years I thought about what might be my next step. I get
to do everything I enjoy and believe in here.
Clark: Do you use your legal skills at all?
Marotta: No and for now I don’t mind that. It’s nice to take
a break. Obviously, I deal with the legal department constantly. But I
can walk by the law library here and not have any yearning desire to
open up a statute book. I do not miss sitting in court all day waiting
for a case to be called or running to the jail or prison. I could stay
at this job for years.
Clark: Do you wish you could help more organizations?
Marotta: I certainly wish we had a $100 million we could give
away. But you also need to spend your money wisely. You don’t want to
be giving just to be giving. You need to measure your impact and make
sure you are making a difference.
Clark: Is there a certain percentage of profits that companies
try to give back to their communities?
Marotta: I think the standard is 1 percent of your pre-tax
profits. We are above that.
Clark: Are there any companies in the United States that give
a lot more than that? Is there a gold standard?
Marotta: Target, for example, talks about being in the 5
percent club. That is highly unique and unusual, though. One percent
seems to be a pretty recognized standard.
Clark: Can you talk a little more about the REACH program and
its diversity efforts?
Marotta: We wanted people to better understand our platform
and we liked an acronym that symbolizes what we do. I know it might
sound a little hokey, but we truly do want to reach down into the
community to make a difference and reach out to our employees and touch
the needs that they have.
Cultural diversity is very important because Milwaukee is the most
segregated city in the country. We have the highest teen pregnancy
rate, the highest disproportion of minority commitment rate and 56
percent of African-American males over the age of 16 are unemployed.
We looked at those issues, we decided we needed to get involved as a
company that lives in the heart of central city. We need to look at our
neighborhoods, what is surrounding us and make a difference.
We decided to reach out to Boys and Girls Clubs, the United Community
Center, the Latino Community Center, the NAACP and other groups like
LULAC (League of United Latin American Citizens) and the Hispanic
Chamber of Commerce. The unemployment issues for Milwaukee, its
minority communities and the city as a whole are significant.
Between 2001 and 2004, the city of Milwaukee lost 71,000 manufacturing
jobs. As a manufacturing company, that’s significant and we said “what
are we going to do in regards to those issues.”
A year from now, I hope we can look back and see that we made a
difference, that we hit the right areas, were able to help create more
jobs, help bridge some cultural diversity gaps and improve life overall
here.
