Q1: You’ve been an SVP Chicago partner since 2014. What drew you to SVP and why do you stay?

Garrett Sheridan (GS): I was involved with several kinds of business-oriented networking organizations around Chicago when I met Ev the first time through a referral from a friend of mine. I was fascinated by this notion of a kind of active philanthropy where you not only donate dollars, but you actually donate time and effort to working with those community-based nonprofits. That was really the motivation for me: to get more involved, give back and have an experience that's more rewarding than just simply writing checks.

I stay because I find it very rewarding to be able to work with the nonprofit Executive Directors (EDs) and their teams directly. Over the years, I’m able to manage that work with my schedule, even though I travel a lot. I found that both SVP and the nonprofits we serve were always understanding of that, so it’s easier than it might be in other instances to fit it in around the very tight work schedule.

Q2: In your position as CEO of Lotis Blue Consulting (LBC), you are very supportive of your professionals engaging in skills-based volunteering, even going as far as making space for them to do so during their business hours. What are the benefits of this for both LBC and for LBC professionals?

GS: I think the needs of the workforce and their relationship with work and what they expect with an employer has evolved.

There was a time where people just wanted to do work and maximize the salary or the total compensation that they got paid and make sure there were good benefits in place. Today’s employees are a lot more socially conscious and they're conscious of what's happening in their community. They want to know that organizations care about things beyond simply being profitable. While our organization had always done things in the community before they were a popular thing, I asked some of my colleagues if they were interested in doing this kind of work, they were very interested and they got a lot from it.

For example, before becoming a Lotis Blue Partner, Erica Grant got involved with one of SVP Chicago’s community-based NFPs, One Million Degrees. That collaboration allowed her to take the lead role with an organization and get the exposure of actually leading conversations with the ED and their leadership team, that she wouldn’t have gotten at that time with a $500 million dollar company. The exposure and the opportunity to lead is an important benefit.

Companies benefit from skills-based volunteering because it’s a much greater development and retention device if they can free up portions of people's time to actually work with the NFPs versus just showing up for a day of service. And that will have a pretty strong developmental effect, especially on high performers like Maggie Miller, who we started to involve when she was quite young and even sponsored her as an SVP partner.

Q3: What do you think triggered this socially conscious awakening of professionals?

GS: People want to be connected to a mission and a vision and things that include -- but go beyond -- being part of a successful, profitable company. And I think too, that with social media and people sort of having a lot more visibility to what each other does, people want to be involved in meaningful areas of impact. When we're interviewing on campus, people spend a lot of time talking about SVP, both our people and the candidates. People have just mentally created more space for things outside of just serving clients or doing their core job.

Q4: What’s your most meaningful experience so far at SVP Chicago?

GS: We did really good work at One Million Degrees, and at the time, they had needs that related to capabilities of our firm. We worked with Paige Ponder (the ED at that time) and we were operating right at the intersection of their strategy and how they think about leadership and deployment of their people to serve their mission so it was it was right in line with what we do for our day jobs. We've developed strong relationships there and even past the initial requests to help align the top team we did multiple additional projects.