Chuck Gibbs, MBA 73 – Paving The Way For Future Generations

(Transcripts may contain a few typographical errors due to audio quality during the podcast recording.)

[00:00:00] Sean Li: Welcome to the OneHaas Alumni Podcast. I’m your host, Sean Li. And today, we’re joined by Chuck Gibbs. Chuck is an alumni of Berkeley Haas, class of 1973. There’s a lot to talk about Chuck has no information that I could find, our team could find, when we’re doing research on him on Google. And so, it limits my ability to introduce him, which makes it even more fascinating.

So, first off, welcome to the podcast, Chuck!

[00:00:43] Chuck Gibbs: Thank you very much, Sean.

[00:00:45] Sean Li: Chuck, you know, we started this call, before we started recording, just talking about how I couldn’t find any information because you worked for the Department of Homeland Security and you, kind of, intentionally didn’t want to have any information of yourself out there. And I feel such a privilege to be able to record this with you and, kind of, ask you these things because it might be your first public record of your story of sorts that’ll be on the internet. So, how we like to start these things off is learning about your origin story — where you’re born, how you grew up.

[00:01:19] Chuck Gibbs: Okay.

[00:01:19] Sean Li: And you can elaborate as much as you want.

[00:01:21] Chuck Gibbs: Okay, all right, first question. I was born in Macon, Georgia, which is south of Atlanta, 75 miles south of Atlanta, the third largest city in the state of Georgia, I think. As a matter of fact, at that particular time, it was the second largest between Savannah and Atlanta. I grew up, basically, Catholic schools, you know, like, Catholic elementary schools, Catholic junior high school. Public schools at the time were segregated, you know. We couldn’t go to white schools, white couldn’t come to black schools, and it was totally segregated, you know, like, up until, what, about 1962, ‘63, ‘64, around the ‘65.

[00:02:03] Sean Li: Right.

[00:02:04] Chuck Gibbs: So, I wound up going to, after I graduated from elementary school, Catholic school… St. Peter Claver was the name of the school, Catholic black saint, a lot of people don’t realize that. I went to the public schools for about my junior year. In my junior year, which was about 1965, schools are starting to be integrated in the state of Georgia.

[00:02:25] Sean Li: Right.

[00:02:26] Chuck Gibbs: So, I live right in front of a, believe it or not, a white military school. And I used to see the guys out there doing their drills every day and, you know, marching around. I said, “One of these days, I’m going to go to that school.” I went to that school and integrated it my senior year.

[00:02:42] Sean Li: Wow.

[00:02:42] Chuck Gibbs: That was one of the first of my life that I did. Everybody always said, “You did things in the first. You were the first in everything.” I was so involved with the Boy Scouts of America, I became one of the first black Eagle Scouts in the state of Georgia.

[00:02:56] Sean Li: Wow.

[00:02:56] Chuck Gibbs: Now, this is all during my junior and senior years in high school.

[00:02:59] Sean Li: Yeah. What was your family like?

[00:03:02] Chuck Gibbs: My father, believe it or not, was a maintenance aircraft guy. It was the Red Tails, the Tuskegee Airmen. And that’s how I got into airplanes. I really, really became addicted to airplanes when I was about seven or eight years old, following around with my father going to different Air Force bases, you know, and watching him working on aircraft.

So, you know, I had all kinds of models of airplanes and spaceships and everything in my house. And you come into my room, you thought I did, you know, that NASA someplace, you know, because I had so many things aircraft because I love airplanes.

So, my dad was, you know, he was a military guy. It was the Army Air Corps at the time, it wasn’t the Air Force. You know, the Air Force came later. And my mother, God rest her soul, so she died at… I was 12 years old, my mother died of pneumonia. So, my grandmother, great aunt grandmother was the one, the woman that really raised me to be the man that I am today.

[00:04:00] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:04:00] Chuck Gibbs: I was the very first one in my family to go to college. I tell everybody. And that was a really, really just, kind of, a, like, a still mark of really the thing that I knew I had to do in my life to be a professional person.

[00:04:12] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:04:13] Chuck Gibbs: After high school, I wound up going to Tennessee State University, which is a historically black college and university (HBCU) in Nashville. And the reason why I went to Tennessee State was that was the only school that had Air Force ROTC in it.

[00:04:29] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:04:29] Chuck Gibbs: And that was during the time, you know, young men were being drafted to go to Vietnam. So, in order to stay out of the draft, you do what you join the ROTC in college and that way it’ll keep you out, keep be drafted. So, that’s what I wound up doing. But also, I wound up going to ROTC at Tennessee State, believe it or not, Sean, to become a pilot. And that’s what I did.

[00:04:52] Sean Li: Wow.

[00:04:52] Chuck Gibbs: I was the commissioned second lieutenant to fly the F-4 Phantom Jet in 1969. I flew to jets right at the end of 1969, 1970. And at that time, I was back and forth to Tennessee State trying to get my degree, you know, because we took early hours to get the commission to go fly during the end of the war.

So, after that was over, I got my degree, you know, like, my time to the Air Force, I said, “Well, I’ll go to the Air Force reserves,” because I was tired of airplanes, you know, flying in all kinds of stuff. And so, I go to the reserves, you know, train airmen how to fly and do this. And I did that.

And that’s how I wound up in California, going to Nevada over at Hamilton Air Force Base, which don’t exist anymore. And it was a base that trained pilots over in Nevada. And that’s how I fell in love with the Bay Area, that my trip to the Bay Area was being in the ROTC, Air Force ROTC.

[00:05:50] Sean Li: I see.

[00:05:51] Chuck Gibbs: During that particular time, I was here. I met several of my fraternity brothers, including John Burris. And you might have heard him. He’s the Johnny Cochran of California and of all of the states, you know, civil rights attorney.

And John was my roommate, and John convinced me to come to Berkeley and get in the program with him. You know, he was both an MBA and law. So, you know, I said, “John, I’ll follow your lead.” And that’s how I got into the MBA school at Cal Berkeley, did the black MBAs with John.

[00:06:21] Sean Li: That’s amazing.

[00:06:21] Chuck Gibbs: And we were the very first, very first group of black MBAs at Berkeley during that particular time, between 1970 and ‘73. And man, you know, it was a struggle. We started my class, a couple of guys with me, and Sean, we wrote a proposal to the San Francisco Foundation to start this incubator, which we call the Technical Assistance Project, the TAP program at Berkeley, at Barrels. We wrote this proposal to the San Francisco Foundation that got the University of California at Berkeley at that particular time a quarter of a million dollars, $250,000, which is now, I understand, is in the millions, that the San Francisco Foundation gives the University of California at Berkeley, you know.

[00:07:07] Sean Li: Wow.

[00:07:08] Chuck Gibbs: So, we started that program. You know what we did? The money that we received from that foundation, we were giving students money to go out to the small businesses, the start-ups, if you had that particular time, that’s what it was called. And, you know, back then it was, like, the mom-and-pop kind of, stores, restaurants and everything.

[00:07:30] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:07:30] Chuck Gibbs: For the student to take their knowledge out to the small business community of what they were learning at Berkeley in the business school — accounting, finance, marketing, proposal writing, fundraising, everything we took.

And the thing went viral. It was all over the Bay Area, you know. First of all, it was a free service for them, but we paid the students quarter-time for their work from that money from the San Francisco Foundation. So, it was a, it was a win-win kind of a situation for the school and the students, both.

[00:08:01] Sean Li: That’s amazing.

[00:08:01] Chuck Gibbs: Any student that came and wanted Asians, African Americans, whites, whatever, you’re going to work for us, you’re going to get paid. And that’s the way it was.

[00:08:10] Sean Li: That’s amazing. I mean, $250,000, that’s…

[00:08:13] Chuck Gibbs: That was a lot of money back then. You think, you know, that was a quarter of a million dollars in 1973.

[00:08:18] Sean Li: And today’s dollars would be around $2 million.

[00:08:21] Chuck Gibbs: Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

[00:08:23] Sean Li: That’s a lot. Wow.

[00:08:25] Chuck Gibbs: It hadn’t changed and the program died, you know, I got it back in 1875.

[00:08:30] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:08:30] Chuck Gibbs: And Dean Holford, who was the dean of the business school at the time, he took it over. And they said, “You know, we need to make this thing a curriculum,” and that’s what they wound up doing.

That’s how the Haas School of Business was created from our hard work. And then, you know, like, the Bill Gates and the Steve Jobs at that particular time, which was an incubator. It was a start-up and incubator, that’s what that program was. But that’s really… that was the combination of the start of the Haas School of Business. That’s what it started, from that technical students program at Barrels. 

[00:09:04] Sean Li: Was it called Haas back then?

[00:09:08] Chuck Gibbs: No, it wasn’t called Haas. The Haas family always was a big, big, foundation donor of the University of California at Berkeley. And because the Haas family was so big and gave the University of California so much money, you know, their connections, with their money sources and everything, that’s how Haas, when they got ready to construct a school, you know, got his name because Haas contributed more money to the Haas School of Business than anybody did.

[00:09:33] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:09:34] Chuck Gibbs: So, the school just figured the school should be named after the Haas family. That’s how he got his name.

[00:09:40] Sean Li: Chuck, I do have to rewind a little bit. But what did you study for your undergrad? You were interested in, you know, aerospace and planes.

[00:09:48] Chuck Gibbs: My undergraduate degree was in aerospace engineering.

[00:09:50] Sean Li: Okay. That makes sense. That was my guess.

[00:09:53] Chuck Gibbs: Yeah, yes.

[00:09:54] Sean Li: It was my hunch.

[00:09:56] Chuck Gibbs: And that was another thing that Tennessee State had that a lot of schools, black schools didn’t have, that program.

[00:10:00] Sean Li: That’s amazing. And when you flew the Phantom, which, you know, I know a little bit about. I’ve seen it at the museums and whatnots. Did you actually, you flew it in Vietnam or?

[00:10:13] Chuck Gibbs: Well, actually, you know, I was making trips between Hickman Field and Hawaii back and forth between Hickman Field in San Diego and Los Angeles, taking stuff to the pilots to fly, even flew planes for them to fly out of Hickman over into Vietnam, you know, dropping napalm and stuff on people, because I refused to drop… I wasn’t a pilot to drop bombs on nobody, you know. I said, “I’m not going to fly an aircraft with army men on them to kill people. I would not do it.” That’s one of the reasons why I got out of the Air Force so early.

[00:10:44] Sean Li: Yeah. I mean, definitely interesting times that you’ve lived through and seen. We’re just joking, kind of, we’re starting out that was born in ‘85 and I feel like I haven’t even seen the… I mean, I feel like the world has changed so much since I was born. But, but since you were born…

[00:11:04] Chuck Gibbs: Oh, yeah. I know we’ve seen a whole lot.

[00:11:07] Sean Li: So, you know, you moved to the Bay Area, your buddy came to Berkeley. I mean, was there any other impetus aside from your buddy encouraging to come to Berkeley and get a, you know, initially you mentioned you started with a JD MBA.

[00:11:23] Chuck Gibbs: Man, at the time, Berkeley was a school at the… during that particular time, power to the people. And I was always known to be a radical because I spoke my mind when I saw things being done wrong. I just couldn’t bite my teeth. I had to let it out, you know, whether you like it or not. And I was that kind of person. That’s how I think that’s… I’ve been that way all my life. And if I see it’s wrong… if something’s wrong, I’m going to tell you it’s wrong.

[00:11:47] Sean Li: Right.

[00:11:47] Chuck Gibbs: And how I can make it right or how we can make it right. You know, we’re going to do it together. And one of the reasons why, at Berkeley, Berkeley was just… it was one of the schools to be at in the United States during that particular time.

[00:12:00] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:12:01] Chuck Gibbs: The times of the civil rights trials and what have you.

[00:12:03] Sean Li: Right.

[00:12:04] Chuck Gibbs: And then, you know, even though we got our head knocked in by the Berkeley police and Oakland police and everybody else during that time because we were protesting things that we knew were wrong.

[00:12:13] Sean Li: Yeah. What were your aspirations or what were your goals for doing business school in particular?

[00:12:20] Chuck Gibbs: My goals of doing business was always to be an entrepreneur for myself, to help other people. Anything that I can do to help folks, that’s what I really wanted to do. And when I got my MBA and my marketing degree and, you know, like, when I undergraduate studied in finance, you know, like, in accounting, you know, I used a lot of the things that I had in proposal writing and stuff, the acquisition and mergers and whatever things that I learned, not only to help myself, but help other people in business, other entrepreneurs and self rather than going to corporations.

Because I worked in corporations and I was always, you know, walking around with a target on my back for being an African American, an intelligent African American person that was not supposed to be as smart as my, you know, counterpart there was.

And I tell everybody this story. Kaiser Engineers, I worked with them as their marketing director. Kaiser Aerospace and Electronics, I worked with them as the senior project manager. Lockheed Missiles and Space, I don’t know, I was an acquisition and merger manager. Hercules Aerospace, Salt Lake City, Utah, you know, contracts director.

Now, this is all in the ‘80s, ‘70s, you know. Like, I left the Bay Area in 1978 and moved to Salt Lake City and stayed up there 10 years, learning the rocket motor business, how to make spaceships, how to make rocket motor boosters.

[00:13:42] Sean Li: Wow. Yeah.

[00:13:43] Chuck Gibbs: And I was working for a company in Utah, and, you know, as a contractor, one of the subcontractors of the companies that made those O rings when you were born in 1982 with that Challenger accident. And we told NASA and the Navy and everybody else these things will break. And if it’s hot and cold and the launch is taking place, they’re going to break. And them boosters are going to come off, killed eight astronauts.

[00:14:08] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:14:08] Chuck Gibbs: And I’m sitting right around the table talking and listening to these people trying to tell the folk that, “Hey, you can’t do… you can’t launch this rocket with these people sitting on top of it.”

[00:14:17] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:14:18] Chuck Gibbs: That was 1982 I was working for Utah Little Hercules Aerospace, one cycle, Utah.

[00:14:25] Sean Li: So, immediately after Berkeley, you went to work for this company?

[00:14:30] Chuck Gibbs: Well, yeah, immediately after Berkeley I went to work for Kaiser Engineers, because I had, you know, like, an engineering degree, you know, like, in a marketing background, which was a fit for them, things that I did. And after that, I went to Lockheed Missiles and Space, which is right down the, you know, Sunnyvale there, doing a pretty much the same thing. And I got an opportunity to go to Salt Lake City as a subcontracting, you know, like working in their program up there to learn that business, because I always learned how to, how to rocket. I knew how airplanes flew, but I never knew spaceship that, you know, like, a rocket motor and spaceship being, you know, blunts. So, I had to go to Utah to learn that business.

[00:15:11] Sean Li: I see.

[00:15:12] Chuck Gibbs: So, it was all in learning. I always wanted to learn things that I never knew. I’m still that way.

[00:15:17] Sean Li: I love that. Student always. That’s the student always motto. Chuck, I have to ask real quick, what was that first company called? Kaiser Engineering?

[00:15:25] Chuck Gibbs: Kaiser, you know, the Kaiser company, which now the Kaiser Permanente.

[00:15:29] Sean Li: Oh, Kaiser. Okay. Kaiser Engineering, okay, got it.

[00:15:32] Chuck Gibbs: You know, the big building in Oakland sitting around Lake Mary, that big building?

[00:15:35] Sean Li: Yeah, Kaiser Permanente, yeah.

[00:15:36] Chuck Gibbs: That was Kaiser industry that had all of the Kaiser companies. You had Kaiser Egyptian. You had Kaiser… you name it, Kaiser did it. Aerospace and electronics. Kaiser engineers. 

[00:15:49] Sean Li: And what was your… I guess coming out of business school, what was the role that you were applying for? The position that you were applying for there?

[00:15:56] Chuck Gibbs: When I first came to Kaiser, I was a, I was an intern out of Tennessee State and the Air Force, both.

[00:16:01] Sean Li: Oh, I see.

[00:16:01] Chuck Gibbs: You know, doing, yeah, minimal, minimal stuff, you just, just to be a part of the Kaiser Industries family.

[00:16:07] Sean Li: Right.

[00:16:08] Chuck Gibbs: You know, stockroom clerks and all that stuff, I did it all in this Kaiser building that still sits right in front of my house down there where I live now.

[00:16:16] Sean Li: And then you continue to work there through Haas? Back then, did you work while going to business school?

[00:16:21] Chuck Gibbs: Well, yeah, I did. I worked. I had three jobs, besides the technical system project, that TAP project I told you about.

[00:16:28] Sean Li: Wow. You helped three jobs while, while going to school.

[00:16:32] Chuck Gibbs: I managed an apartment building. That’s one of the ways that I could pay my own rent, doing that.

[00:16:40] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:16:41] Chuck Gibbs: And worked at janitorial service.

[00:16:45] Sean Li: That’s amazing.

[00:16:46] Chuck Gibbs: Worked for a friend’s company.

[00:16:48] Sean Li: Yeah, the hardships and sacrifice you had to make.

[00:16:51] Chuck Gibbs: Oh, yeah, it wasn’t easy.

[00:16:53] Sean Li: And, you know, engineering degree, you know, putting yourself through school and things like that.

[00:16:58] Chuck Gibbs: But you see, Sean, it was so different back then. You see a young, a young African American boy walking around, you know, and that much, you know, that kind of paperwork attached to his name. It’s just hard for people to believe that. Especially, I’ve MBAed from the University of California at Berkeley, I still got people asking, “You went to Berkeley? You got an MBA in Berkeley?” Yeah, I did.

[00:17:17] Sean Li: Yeah, you set the groundwork, for all we know, and we probably can say, I can say this, you know, probably set the groundwork a lot of us, right, coming to Haas in later years.

[00:17:27] Chuck Gibbs: Oh, yes. I’m sure I did, Sean, because, you know, they saw me as being, you know, like, “This guy’s a pioneer,” you know. I said, “I know I am, you know.” I want other students to come behind me. I don’t care what the color, the race, the ethnicity, the sex they are, I don’t care. If they want to make something out of themselves, I’m going to do all I can to help them.

[00:17:47] Sean Li: That’s amazing. No, we appreciate you. Thank you so much, both for your service for our country and for our school. What did you do after Salt Lake City?

[00:17:56] Chuck Gibbs: Salt Lake City, I came back to Oakland. And believe it or not, I went to work for an environmental company doing the military base, environmental cleaning of the military bases, removing all kinds of stuff, bombs and the whole point. From Watsonville, down around Monterey, where the Navy or the Army used to train, you know, new military soldiers down in Watsonville, all the way back up to Hunter’s Point, you know, but we didn’t clean up all the way because we couldn’t get all the money that we were supposed to get from them. They call it a BRAC. That was the military base closure back in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

[00:18:31] Sean Li: Yeah. I live on one right now. I live on El Toro Marine Base down here in Irvine that was closed in the ‘70s and reclaimed and cleaned up and all that stuff. I literally live on an old base.

[00:18:44] Chuck Gibbs: And I worked for a company called Harding Lawson. They were private companies over in Novato. And I was their contract director.

[00:18:51] Sean Li: What made you leave, kind of, the aerospace industry to…

[00:18:57] Chuck Gibbs: Well, when I came back, the Army BRAC, that, that was where all the money was. And the way that you get into that, even though you’re an aerospace person, you know, you try to go to the back door to find out how you can get a position that supported, you know, companies that were doing that stuff on a big scale and big contracts, especially, like, Kaiser. Kaiser Engineers, you know, like, they were hardcore. And when the Harding Lawson came along, you know, like, they took a lot of Kaiser’s business, Kaiser Engineer’s business, away from them.

So, they looked at a person like me, saying, “Look, we could use Chuck Gibbs, because this guy’s been in Utah, you know, flew planes and do everything and went and got his MBA from Cal Berkeley. And we need a person like this on our team.” So, I joined them in Harding Lawson for, maybe, about three, four years. And then Lockheed Missiles and Space came after me, you know, again. I went back to work for them again. And then I left Lockheed Missiles and Space and went back to Kaiser Engineers because they offered me more money to come back to them, because they had big contracts over on the East Coast doing base closures, and they needed a contracts director that had the kind of experience that I had, Sean.

You know, like, to go back there and run their small business group, their small business contractors that they were having problems with getting paid for the work that they were doing. So, that’s how I wound up back in D.C. between back and forth with Kaiser Engineers, once I left Lockheed Missiles and Space out of, out of California.

This was the late ‘90s. Going into the 2000, I went back to D.C., started going back and forth between. I was here in Oakland for, like, a month, maybe a couple of weeks, and then I go back to D.C. and I stay back there, like, two or three months, back and forth. And I did that for two years until Kaiser Engineers tried to get into the nuclear business with the company back there that owned them because they were owned by a company called LMI, which had bought Kaiser Engineers. And Kaiser Engineers was the only one of the Kaiser companies, Sean, that was still left, besides Kaiser Permanente. And all the rest of them had gone, and they had died away. And Permanente is still the largest, largest one all over the world, all over the United States right now, for Kaiser.

But after that, I came back, because they got in trouble with the LMI, and they wanted me to come back here. And they came back and they fired me, you know, because there was no room for me because they were going bankrupt, you know. So, I wound up going back to D.C. with my connections back there that I’ve made for years with those people all over these D.C. area contractors, aerospace, technology, you know, IT people. You know, you name it, I did it and I worked for them back there as a subcontractor.

So, that’s why I was in D.C., man, for almost 20 years. 2001, I was working for the company that was the only minority woman owned business in the White House that did all of the IT support for the activity in the White House on 9/11. I was their contracts director.

[00:22:04] Sean Li: That’s amazing.

[00:22:05] Chuck Gibbs: And you could imagine, you know, the fights that I had with the big contractors. My subcontractors, IBM, all of the big players, you know, we were the boys in control because we had control of all of the contracts that were coming into the White House for IT work.

[00:22:19] Sean Li: For IT work. So, you transitioned from the contractual, like, the base cleanups, right, closings, environmental?

[00:22:27] Chuck Gibbs: Yeah, environmental. I went back. I left environmental and went back to IT. I saw where it was going. The environmental stuff was dying. So, what you do is you got to reinvent yourself.

[00:22:38] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:22:39] Chuck Gibbs: You can’t stay. That’s one thing I learned about Berkeley Business School — think out of the box. You know, reinvent yourself when you see something that’s going away, you know, a skill that you have, you know, your background or whatever, and you’re going to go to something new. What am I going to do? At that particular time, IT was it. Right now, it’s AI. So, you know, it was IT for me. And I said, “Look, I got to get into the information technology business.” And this company that I work for, Kestrel Associates, Kestrel, they were a minority woman owned business. But how it became that, listen to this story. A general from the United… an admiral from the United States Army found this black woman that I knew that went to Tennessee State. She was a financial analyst for the Navy and made her CEO of his company.

[00:23:30] Sean Li: Wow.

[00:23:31] Chuck Gibbs: So, I helped them build their company up to $100 million-

[00:23:35] Sean Li: Wow.

[00:23:36] Chuck Gibbs: … over the ten years that I was with them. And that time it was over for them because they were being kicked out of the White House, because George W. Bush wanted IBM. And the big players after 9/11, they didn’t want a small company like that running their IT stuff.

[00:23:49] Sean Li: I see. Yeah, yeah. And then, did you join the Homeland Security after that?

[00:23:55] Chuck Gibbs: Yes. About four years after Kestrel, I joined Homeland Security as a contractor.

[00:24:01] Sean Li: Right. Were you doing IT work for Homeland Security as well?

[00:24:04] Chuck Gibbs: Homeland Security, I started working with them doing contracts, doing cost-plus contracts, you name it.

[00:24:11] Sean Li: What’s that?

[00:24:12] Chuck Gibbs: A cost-plus contract is a contract that you put in place. It’s not a firm fixed price contract. Firm fixed price contracts are limited for one, two, or three years. Cost-plus contracts can go 10 years or longer, with a whole lot more money involved. They’re the big ones.

[00:24:26] Sean Li: What kind of work was it?

[00:24:27] Chuck Gibbs: I did contracts for all of the radio warning stuff, the x-ray machines, the big ones you see at the ports. I did all that stuff.

[00:24:36] Sean Li: I see. Oh, wow.

[00:24:37] Chuck Gibbs: After I got tired of that, they needed somebody to do data and oversights at Homeland Security. That’s where I wound up in.

[00:24:43] Sean Li: I see.

[00:24:43] Chuck Gibbs: For all the port around the country, especially the southern border. I had the highest level of secret clearance that you could get right now, which I still do have.

[00:24:51] Sean Li: Yeah. Are you still with the Homeland Security?

[00:24:55] Chuck Gibbs: No.

[00:24:56] Sean Li: Not anymore, okay.

[00:24:57] Chuck Gibbs: No. I’m pretty much retired right now.

[00:24:58] Sean Li: Chuck, you had mentioned that, you know, you had to deal with a lot of racism back in the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, you know. What have you seen change over the years, you know, in the ‘90s and the 2000s?

[00:25:10] Chuck Gibbs: Well, Sean, I think, over the years, you know, like, people like yourself, younger people, they’re starting to see really what racism really is about. And, you know, it ain’t about slavery, it ain’t about that stuff. It’s about, you know, opening up yourself to other people.

[00:25:26] Sean Li: Right.

[00:25:26] Chuck Gibbs: You know, regardless, you know, for who they are and not necessarily how smart they are, but for a person themselves, you know, to be a real person, regardless of what their color is, what, you know, their sex is, their gender is, it doesn’t matter. But people, that’s really what matters to me. And when I see a young person that really, I think, you know, can really excel and make something out of themselves, you know, I’m going to try and give you all the encouragement and the good words that I can give you to make you the person that you really want to be in your life.

[00:25:57] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:25:58] Chuck Gibbs: It’s called, it’s called mentoring. Mentoring in the best way, you know, to make people feel good about themselves, like a football coach, you know. You don’t, you don’t just start cursing people out, you know, make you, make you feel low and then you’re going to, and then you’re going to make you feel good about yourself.

So, that’s where I am right now in my life. I’m trying to encourage young folk, you know. I thought about writing a book maybe. And I said, “Well, is it really worth it?” No, it’s really worth it for me to do exactly what I’m doing right now, talking to you, putting myself out there to let people know who I am and the life that I’ve had, you know. I could try to help other people, particularly our young people.

[00:26:39] Sean Li: Kind of, piggybacking off of that, you know, what advice would you give to the younger generation based on your life experiences?

[00:26:47] Chuck Gibbs: Give the young generation… in China, I know it’s tough right now, a lot of young people with social media and that kind of thing that’s out there for them right now. But what I try to do talk to them about love and, you know, respect for each other, you know, put your phone away and, you know, talk to somebody person to person, like you and I talk to each other these days, you know, not by machines or what have you, but, you know, you want to sit down in person. You know, you don’t… we don’t have that personal contact now, you know, like in schools. You know, in schools, most schools, kids got the laptops or the phones in front of their faces. They’re not interacting with each other. And then that’s what our society is missing these days. But anything I can do to change that, believe me, my man, I would do it in a minute.

[00:27:33] Sean Li: Yeah. What are some words of wisdom on how someone in this day and age can live their life better to feel more fulfilled and more meaning?

[00:27:43] Chuck Gibbs: Words of wisdom that I have, Sean, I’m very, very Catholic. And, you know, it took me years to get back into the Catholic Church, you know, after the sexual abuse and all that stuff, you know, I’ve only been back in the church for, like, 20 years, 25, 30. I was born and raised Catholic. And my faith is very strong, man. And I tell you, you know, I read the Bible a lot. I put a lot of my trust in, you know, like, in faith and God and Jesus Christ and angels and the saint, blessed virgin Mary. And that’s what my life is these days, man. I’m just so blessed to have, you know, spirituality and strong faith in myself.

And that’s the first thing I’d tell anybody, man. See, religion is not being taught in schools anymore. And that’s one of the things that should be put back. I let our young people know, man, that spirituality is real, real sacred. Every human being on this planet needs that, need to be taught, you know, about real spirituality, not no fake stuff, but real stuff.

And that’s where I am these days, you know. And I pray hard. I do anything that I can to help people. You know, I go down to St. Vincent de Paul, serve food, you know, like, any shelters that need stuff that I got, stuff that I don’t have, that I can go out and buy and take it to them. That’s what I do.

And I just, you know, I do it without saying, you know, anything. I do it because I want to do it, because I need to do it to help other people, especially in this world we live in right now.

[00:29:14] Sean Li: I agree with the spirituality statement as well that, you know, that there’s something very centering, grounding about it, right? Where, especially for young people, it’s the whole, really, you know, it’s part of that Haas model beyond yourself, of thinking beyond yourself, right? And to think beyond yourself, you have to be grounded. You can’t be elsewhere. 

[00:29:34] Chuck Gibbs: You know, I tell people all the time, Sean, you can’t blame somebody because they have not been taught about spirituality. If they don’t have, you know, like, a mirroring around them, they don’t have, you know, like you, you know, like your mother, your father, you know, like, a people that are really, really got to have strong belief and faith to tell them, you know, really, “This is what you need to do to make your life better, you know, put your trust in God.”

And that’s serious business, believe me. It really is. Getting young people, man, on that mindset, that they know that they got to live straight, on the straight and narrow, our world would be a whole lot better place than it is right now.

[00:30:14] Sean Li: Yeah. You know, with the progress in racial equity, kind of, during your lifetime, how do you think, kind of, in the times that we are now, individuals or organizations can contribute to advancing diversity and inclusion, you know, despite all this DEI pullback and then all these things?

[00:30:31] Chuck Gibbs: Well, I mean, you know, like, programs, in particular. I mean, things that we can create, you know, like, to convince, you know, young and old alike, that, you know, like, I mean, this is really what life should be for all of us. It ain’t about all how much money we can make and, you know, all of the other bling and stuff that go along with it. You know, it’s about the communication between us, the words. And when words, man, and when you’re talking to people and you do it the right way, you can’t realize, you know, just the emphasis that it’ll have, impacting somebody to make them look in the mirror and say, “Wait a minute, I got to change my life to do something better, not only to help myself, but to help other people.”

And that’s where we are in this world right now, Sean. I mean, programs, we could have programs in place, if they work. I mean, there’s a whole lot of things we can do. But as far as, you know, going back to your question, you know, like, have I seen the growth, the changes, you know, like, of racism in the United States of America? There have been a whole lot of changes. A whole lot of good things that happened. A whole lot of bad things, too, that happened, you know. But I mean, it’s a work in progress.

And I tell everybody, I say, slavery in this country, like any other country, it’s a fabric of that country. It’s going to always be the bad side of that country. And it’s no way that, you know, that you can put it aside and say it didn’t happen. It did happen. But it’s lessons learned, you know, like, from slavery that us, like you, educated people like yourself, like myself. You know, I try to pass on to our generations, you know, like, behind us, you know, the ones before us that will listen to us, you know. That’s where I’m at in my life, man. Just trying to just give words, you know, people words of encouragement. Make self something… not of themselves, but make somebody else happy. Make somebody else succeed, you know. Make somebody else smile.

[00:32:30] Sean Li: Yeah, lift other people up and being the leaders that people before us have paved the way to allow us to be in this position to be the leaders, right?

[00:32:40] Chuck Gibbs: Exactly.

[00:32:42] Sean Li: People like yourself, even, paving the way for me to come to this school and be a light for other people. So, fiat lux, in that sense.

[00:32:50] Chuck Gibbs: Standing there with you, Sean. That’s what the world needs. We don’t have that in our world these days, you know.

[00:32:56] Sean Li: Yeah. One last question. This episode is going to come out during Black History Month. I just have to ask, you know, what does that mean to you personally? And how do you celebrate it?

[00:33:04] Chuck Gibbs: Black History Month, you want to laugh? Shortest month of the year. Okay. Well, you know, great. I mean, you know, for us to honor, you know, the black people that have done great things for us, you and me both, you know, they helped us all, you know. And that’s what Black History Month is to me, you know, and learning things about black history. Every holiday of black history, I learn a little bit more than I knew the year before. I do that for a reason and try to put it in perspective. Somebody that created something, did something, you know, and then never recognized, you know, like myself. I’ve created a lot of things. I’ve done a lot of things in my life. I never boasted on it, you know. I was the first of a whole lot of things in my life, I never boasted on it.

But the real pioneers of black history, you know, we always say Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and whoever else, you know, the mainstream people, but you’ve got a lot of people, man, that are, that are black history pioneers that have never been noticed. They didn’t want to be noticed.

[00:34:11] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:34:11] Chuck Gibbs: They just do what they do.

[00:34:13] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:34:14] Chuck Gibbs: Like, to help themselves and help their black brothers and sisters survive every day.

[00:34:19] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:34:19] Chuck Gibbs: And then those are the kind of people that I’m looking for in the Black History Month.

[00:34:23] Sean Li: That’s inspiring.

[00:34:24] Chuck Gibbs: To find them and thank them and do whatever I can to help them, you know, to keep doing what they do.

[00:34:29] Sean Li: Yeah.

[00:34:30] Chuck Gibbs: And that’s it. You know, I can’t… Martin Luther King and the Malcolm X’s and all those guys, they’re always getting recognition. But think about the little people that do stuff for Black History Month. And they don’t want to be recognized. No need to be recognized.

[00:34:44] Sean Li: That’s true.

[00:34:44] Chuck Gibbs: That’s the way they want it. They want to keep it quiet.

[00:34:50] Sean Li: Chuck, anything else that you want to share that I didn’t get a chance to ask you today?

[00:34:58] Chuck Gibbs: Sean, a whole lot. I’m talking a whole lot, man. All I can say for our young brothers and sisters at Cal and the Haas School of Business, like, after the Golden Grads, we saw this young guy, you know. Like, he was an Asian, by the matter of fact, in the lobby there, we were just asking them some information. And my buddy with me, you know, he said, “What are you going to do, you know, when you get out of Haas?” He said, “Just for, you know, I was thinking about doing… just starting a startup, but I don’t know what I really want to do.” And I looked at him and I said, “You know what you want to do? You want to get your MBA. You’re first in line to get your MBA at Haas right now. You’re in an undergraduate school. It don’t matter, they got to take you with your MBA.”

[00:35:38] Sean Li: Yeah, yeah.

[00:35:38] Chuck Gibbs: So, that’s where I am, man. Encouraging folk to make their lives better. And go, Bears!

[00:35:44] Sean Li: Go, Bears!

[00:35:45] Chuck Gibbs: Go, Bears. Continue to go, Bears, and do good things. That’s all we can do these days.

[00:35:50] Sean Li: And I appreciate you, Chuck, for coming on the podcast, taking the time to speak with me today. It was a pleasure having you on.

[00:35:56] Chuck Gibbs: Sean, thank you very much for inviting me.

[00:36:02] Sean Li: Thanks again for tuning in to this episode of the OneHaas Podcast. If you enjoyed our show today, please hit that Subscribe or Follow button on your favorite podcast player. We’d also really appreciate you giving us a five-star rating and review.

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OneHaas Podcast is a production of the Haas School of Business and produced by University FM. Until next time. Go, Bears!