Karen:
Today's guest is someone whose entire mission is about lifting
others. As president and CEO of Goodwill Keystone, Ed “Kingfish” Lada leads an
organization that transforms donations into opportunities, creating ripples of
impact across our community. Ladies and gentlemen, Ed Lada. Welcome, Ed. Thanks
for coming today.

Ed:
Thank you for having me. That was an amazing intro.

Karen:
I have to give you the intro you deserve, right? Let's start there.
Kingfish — this is your nickname. There's gotta be a story behind it. I want to
know the story.

Ed:
I'm born and raised in New Orleans, and in Louisiana, if you know
anything about political lore, there was a very populist governor named Huey P.
Long — much beloved by the common folk, but assassinated on the steps of the
Capitol. That's kind of the background of the nickname. The last time my family
was all together, at my nephew's wedding, he told me, when I got my first CEO
job within Goodwill in Kansas City, 'oh, you're some big kingfish now.' I kind
of owned it like a badge, because when someone calls you a kingfish in
Louisiana, it's not necessarily a good thing — it's a warning not to forget
where you came from, not to overstep or overstay your welcome. I grew up in
poverty for most of my childhood and adulthood, so whenever I get to explain
what kingfish means, especially up here in Pennsylvania, it allows me to
remember where I came from and talk about my roots. People hear 'kingfish' and
think it sounds pompous, but really, it's just me staying connected to why I do
what I do.

Karen:
Can you tell us a little more about Goodwill? Having worked with you
and served on the board, I've learned it's so much more than the thrift store
people think of.

Ed:
Most people think every Goodwill is the same, but we're part of a
federated model of 501(c)(3) nonprofits — each Goodwill has its own board, its
own CEO, its own territory. As a whole, we're an $8.5 billion entity across
North America, the largest workforce development provider in North America, and
the second largest online learning platform behind Coursera, which most people
have no idea about. My organization, Goodwill Keystone Area, covers 22 counties
in central and southeastern PA, with 40 retail stores and three distribution
centers.

A third of my employees have
documented disabilities. Our whole purpose is creating sustainable communities
— every store we open diverts about a million and a half pounds from landfills
every year, and functions as a massive economic engine. But the real cherry on
top is the workforce development and mission services the stores fund. We run a
re-entry program, two years in, with 500 formerly incarcerated individuals
served and 0% recidivism. We have our Women of Wealth program teaching
entrepreneurial skills, and we're the first Goodwill in the country teaching AI
literacy. The beauty of the social enterprise model is that when we get
philanthropy or government dollars, it's because we've already proven this
mission out — it's a circular model of support for our local communities.

Karen:
Tell me about the AI training you're providing.

Ed:
It's been our point of view since May 2023, when ChatGPT dropped,
that AI literacy was going to be foundational moving forward. I had the
privilege of working alongside computer vision and machine learning before, as
CEO of Goodwill in Kansas City, where we built the Artemis Initiative —
training program participants with significant disabilities to help build a
neural network. That's where I understood the potential, and realized there was
a tidal wave of change coming that we weren't talking about. Even if the
technology never gets better than it is today, it's still transformational — it
represents a green field of opportunity for people who are underskilled or have
disabilities to really skill up.

Think of a single mother with
two jobs who has 30 minutes to herself — now she has a legal expert on her hip.
We teach people in our programs how to take a picture of their fridge and
pantry and ask, what can I make with what I have, how do I budget? One of our
program participants, in a women's shelter through our Women of Wealth program,
had a repo car and was terrified to call the repo company, scared she'd be
arrested and separated from her kids. We taught her to use generative AI to arm
herself with the right questions before making that call — which, it turned
out, would have reopened her case and destroyed her credit even further. She
was able to take those questions to a financial advisor we connected her with
instead. That's one of many stories showing how this technology is impacting
people's real lives at home.

Ed:
I very bluntly tell people AI is not going to replace them, with
some narrow exceptions. People who use and leverage generative AI are going to
be pushed to the top of the pile. Part of our AI literacy effort is teaching
people to use it at home first — if people are comfortable using it at home,
they're more likely to advocate for ethical, right use cases, and more
comfortable adopting it at work as the tools mature. Culturally, we had to
build an AI sandbox — a controlled environment for governance and security, but
one that also encouraged people to go tinker and break stuff, because an idea
from anywhere in the organization could have a transformational effect.

A peer of mine, Dr. Markham
Wort Davis, once told me: it's not about buy-in, it's about co-creation. Buy-in
is a top-down narrative. Co-creation is bottom-up — as CEO, I gave permission
to look at this, but I needed my people on the ground to tell me what problems
we actually needed to solve. For any executive starting their AI journey: yes,
you need governance, security, a roadmap, all that corporate-ese. But the real
secret sauce is old-school problem identification — what was the process
originally supposed to solve for? Start at the root of the problem, let your
subject matter experts in HR, accounting, retail identify it, and then bring
your technologists in with the right tool, because that part changes every day.

Karen:
Are there any significant milestones or moments that defined who you
are today?

Ed:
Growing up in New Orleans shaped a lot of it, but Hurricane Katrina
absolutely shaped the way I view the world. My wife and I were transitionally
homeless for about six weeks after the storm. My organization at the time lost
13 employees — we either couldn't find them, or they were lost in the flood. I
wound up becoming the triage point for my organization, coordinating FEMA for
employees trapped in their homes, while dealing with my own family's situation.
I realized I thrive in chaos, but I think it's also a defense mechanism —
compartmentalizing instead of actually dealing with the trauma.

At one point, my wife and I ran
out of money at a hotel in Amelia Island and I had to go ask the manager for
help — the first time in my life I'd ever had to beg, even though I grew up in
poverty. He connected us with his local church, which raised funds to get us
back on the road. My wife and I ended up as two of three literal climate
refugees who landed in Burlington, Vermont. That experience renewed my spirit
in the support the world showed New Orleans, but it also shaped me in painful
ways. I don't think trauma is always the best place to lead from, but I tell my
staff: when someone has the courage to come ask for help, I know what's behind
that courage — shame, guilt, uncertainty — and we owe it our best effort.

Ed:
I went bankrupt when I was 21 — graduated with honors from Loyola in
New Orleans, worked in government affairs at Princeton as an internship,
thought I was hot stuff, came home and couldn't find work for nine months. When
I finally found a job, I was paying more in bills than I was making, right
before I got married. Having lived through that, I can call things out a little
more honestly with the people I work with, because I've lived a day in their
life. When you're a leader, your authenticity and your humanity are what let
you actually connect with your people — whether that's dealing with poverty,
criminality, or addiction like I have, or something else entirely. We're
servant leaders. We're here for the people we serve, both internally and
externally.

I learned more watching what
people did wrong than what they did right — if you tell me how you succeeded, I
might not get much out of it, but tell me how you failed, and I'll learn
something real.

Karen:
Is there anything right now — a book, a habit, a mindset — that's
lifting you?

Ed:
The business is going as great as I could have hoped — we're serving
220% more people since I've been here. I'm at a point in my career I'd call
close to the peak of it, so part of what's lifting me now is leaning harder
into time management. I don't take external meetings on Mondays or Fridays
unless I approve them specifically, because I know I need desk time, and if I
don't control it, things slip through the cracks. I'm also finding I want to be
more creative — I'd love to write a book on AI ethics from a different point of
view. I said it out loud here, so now I'm committed. The harder part is
figuring out how to make that time without sacrificing time with my
15-year-old, my 10-year-old, and my wife.

Karen:
Ed, thanks so much for sharing your journey and all the inspiring
work you're doing at Goodwill Keystone. You've really shown us what it means to
lead with purpose, innovate with heart, and lift entire communities with the
work you're doing.

Ed:
Thank you, Karen. Appreciate the opportunity. It was fun.