Practically Fearless with Chris Girata: Episode 7, Kit Sawers

In this episode, a candid conversation about leadership and optimism with Klyde Warren Park President Kit Sawers. Hear about her transformative work in community development and diversity initiatives in Dallas, the innovative use of Klyde Warren Park during the pandemic and a discussion on the future of Dallas.
Q&A with Kit Sawers
Chris: Welcome to Practically Fearless with Chris Girata. Today’s guest is a fundraising guru working to make a long-lasting impact on the North Texas community. Some of her past titles include VP of Special Events for North Texas Super Bowl XLV and Chief Development Officer for United Way of Metro Dallas. Now you can find her serving as the president of Klyde Warren Park. Kit Sawers, thanks for being with us today, my friend. I’m glad that you are here.
Kit: Thank you. Thanks for having me. I’m honored.
Chris: Let’s start with just a little bit of you. Tell us a bit of the work you’re doing right now.
Kit: So, about five and a half years ago, I took over Klyde Warren Park as head of that, and I’m really, really enjoying it. It’s fun to be focusing on something that has an impact in the city and that other cities are looking at as a model. So, I tour people through every day who are coming from other parts of the country because they’re interested not only in creating this green space that’s active over a highway, but also something that has the economic impact that the park has had and really pulls the community together. That’s an exciting thing actually for the U.S., is that these kinds of things are being done around the country to stitch communities back together that frankly were blown up by the highway system.
Chris: So, when I first visited Dallas, thinking about moving here, I was taken on a little tour and we went through downtown and they showed me Klyde Warren, and I thought, this is the kind of community I want to be a part of. Not only are they trying to stitch together these communities because highways have been a total bomb for community centers, but also they need green space. They donât have it, they created it. I kind of love that about the Dallas community. And so youâve talked a little bit about how Klyde Warren has that capacity to bring communities together. And youâve also named that one of the challenges is to continue to increase diversity at Klyde Warren, let Klyde Warren lead the way. And so how have you attempted to address some of those needs to unite communities here in Dallas through the park?
Kit: Yeah, in a couple of different ways because itâs very important. Itâs core, itâs part of the mission of Klyde Warren Park, to pull these different diverse communities together, so everyone really feels like it is their park. So, we’ve done multiple things. We talk to the people who are in the park. Frankly, what do they enjoy doing? What do they want to do more of? We create activities that are free. Really, everything in the park is free, other than the food trucks, obviously, and Mi Cocina. But we create activities that are representative of their communities and that actually help co-create. One of the things we’ve done â well, two things we’ve done recently. One is we created a diversity, equity and inclusion task force that really helps us focus on the types of things that maybe we don’t have because we’re a very small staff putting on programming for 1.3 million visitors a year. And we’re 17 people on the staff, and a lot of those are operations running a park with its facilities on top of a highway. So, it’s not like all those people are focused on programming. So, this DEI task force identifies things that we may not be aware of. They’re associated with a fundraising group we have, our corporate council. And so these people on our corporate council and the DEI task force are representative of companies from around the country, and so they see what’s being done elsewhere and what might be successful in Dallas. And then thirdly, we’ve partnered with the city of Dallas. So, Mayor Johnson â we’re very excited â approached us about having our tree lighting be the city of Dallas’s tree lighting and our Independence Day celebration, which had 35,000 people at it this past year, be the city’s Independence Day celebration. And when Tim Scott, the senator from South Carolina came to visit recently, Mayor Johnson took him to Klyde Warren Park. So, we’re working with the city a lot to make sure that we continue to be all things for all people.
Chris: So, you referenced a few times in there the idea of fundraising because obviously if it’s the city’s park, the city needs to get behind what happens there. I’d love for you to talk a little bit about your background, because this is not the first organization that you have run or impacted around fundraising. And so what motivates you to motivate others to actually make a contribution to their community?
Kit: Well, I think it’s a great phenomenon in Dallas. And Dallas â you’ve lived in other parts of the country, I have as well â I feel like I know the Dallas fundraising scene, and one of the exciting things about what we have here is this public-private partnership perspective. And so even though Klyde Warren Park is the city’s park, as you say, it’s privately run, it’s kind of like a PBS, right? We raise money from individuals and corporations and foundations to push out free programming to the community. And that’s a concept that a lot of us buy into. And being able to partner with public entities helps amplify the work that we’re able to do. And so I like the fundraising scene here in particular because there’s very much a can-do attitude. We like finding the best things in other parts of the country, or frankly in the rest of the world, and trying to bring them to Dallas. We see no reason why we shouldn’t have these things here. And so I think we’re at an incredible moment in time right now in the city where we are creating things, trying out new things, and there is such a generous community here. It’s almost like you have to, if you move here, pass some kind of entrance exam and be willing to be on board with putting the city on your back and helping carry it forward. I think the Dallas Mavericks are our most aptly named professional sports team because people, they’re not afraid of doing things here. So, I’ve loved being able to work with people who are really motivated by what makes this city better, what’s going to make their community better. And when you pull together the right people, the rest isn’t rocket science. It’s really just a matter of surrounding yourself with these amazing people who are so generous.
Chris: So, you said a couple of things about Dallas not being afraid, and so here we like to talk about overcoming fear. And so now that we’ve addressed what you’re up to right now, think back in your life moments that may have seemed like big hurdles that may have scared you. Can you name one of those moments and talk about perhaps how you addressed that fear and overcame it?
Kit: So, well just continuing the park for a minute⌠I mean, we talk about Covid for example, right? Because everyone had their obstacles to overcome during Covid. Our challenge was how do we get the park to play a role in helping with Covid? I mean, we’re a park, right? What can we do?
Chris: Healing, sure.
Kit: Exactly. We were asked by lots of different groups if we would be a testing center for Covid, and I refused because I thought you could do that in any parking lot in the city. We needed to be what the city needed as an outdoor space, especially once we all started realizing you could get sick less outside than inside. So, I started doing some research and learned a couple different things. So, research is one of the ways I think I overcome obstacles. I know that a lot of people say obstacles are opportunities, but I truly think they are. They’re perhaps different opportunities, but they certainly open up doors that you can’t even imagine they’re going to open up. So, in doing my research, there are a couple of things that popped up. One, I realized that a lot of the most amazing big public spaces in the country with these beautiful promenades, cities like Cleveland and places, were built after the Spanish flu or coming out of the Spanish flu. And so even though they didn’t quite know medically what we know now, they knew enough to know that being outdoors, they were getting sick less. And so that turned into a beautiful thing for these communities around the country. And I really, I mean you’ve probably seen it â I’m certainly attuned to it because I do it every day â but seeing this, a greening up kind of our country-
Chris: Yes, for sure.
Kit:… and like you and I said, the stitching together of communities, there’s a real focus on this green space right now, certainly in Texas, in Dallas, and really around the country.
Another thing I did was I thought, gosh, I looked up parks and it said you could only have events for, I think it was like 10 people or something, almost like a pod of people in parks. And I thought, âWell, gosh, we have this big space. How is that possible?â Then I found a loophole that said if you are an event venue, there weren’t capacity limits as long as you all could keep people in groups of six or fewer. We ended up painting circles on the ground and separated everybody by 10 feet. I think everyone was facing the same direction is what they anticipated. You weren’t all facing each other at a party and coughing on each other or whatever. You were facing a stage, I assume. So, I thought, âWell, we’ve got this big old stage. Sure, clearly, we’re an event venue, not a park. I know we’re called Klyde Warren Park, but we’re really an event venue.â So, the more I looked into things and the more I talked to people, the more I was able to come up with ways to find a light and to kind of dig our way out of what could have been a hole.
Chris: It certainly sounds like you are a problem solver. Where does that come from? Did you have that in your home growing up? Did you experience a lot of opportunities when you felt the pressure or the fear of something presenting itself to you?
Kit: I definitely was raised in a home where I needed to solve a lot of problems. My parents divorced when I was three, and my brothers and I were raised by my mother, and my mother suffered terribly from depression and ultimately ended up committing suicide. There was a lot of juggling. Going to see my father, my mother would get mad at me on the way to the airport like it was my fault that I was going to see my father. So, there was a lot of dancing and trying to keep everybody happy. And as tough as that was growing up, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. I think that probably the problem solving⌠I was trained how to solve problems, how to get out of irrational situations where it looked like maybe there was no answer or no hope, and there always ended up being hope or an answer there every single time. A lot of it was reaching out to my friend’s parents for help and things like that. And so I know that by going and talking to people and doing things, I’m literally able to solve whatever kind of obstacle comes my way.
Chris: That’s what I heard as you were describing your childhood. I find that people tend not to ask for help, that somehow they have convinced themselves that they’re supposed to do it on their own. But it does sound like there are multiple examples in your life where you’ve very confidently created partnerships, created collaboration to achieve a bigger goal or to solve a problem. And maybe you just had to, when you were a kid, you just couldn’t do it on your own. You are a child having to get over some really hard stuff. Have there been moments when you’ve found that your natural inclination to create partnerships and to ask for help have really made an impact on you for the good?
Kit: 100%. And I noticed that really for the first time professionally. I was a student at the time, but kind of heading toward my profession when I was in law school at SMU. So, I passed the bar, but I just think I would’ve been a terrible lawyer. I married a litigator and he loved litigation. There was a winner and a loser, and that made sense to him. He loves sports, litigation. I was drawn to mediation. I like a winner and a winner, and I think that that is really what I now do as much as I possibly can. If I try to look at whoever I want to potentially partner with and say, âWhat is it that I can do for them?â That’s always what I start with because as generous and kind as people want to be, it’s more sustainable if there’s something for them in it as well. It makes it easier to continue and justify. It’s not an add-on for them. Not that they don’t want to, but add-ons are hard these days. And so if it can kind of go to the core of whatever it is they’re doing professionally or personally or something, it ends up being a more lasting partnership, which frankly is a deeper partnership and is more successful in the long run.
Chris: What an interesting way to approach the idea of asking for help by thinking through almost, I hate to call it karma, but the idea that you are helping, you are putting that help out there. You are almost banking the help when you need it, so it sort of feels like a give and take. You’ve given. And so when you need to take, no problem because it’s already out there. And something else that I thought was interesting, you say you’re an optimist. I kind of think I’m an optimist too, but you described it as approaching life, sort of win-lose or approaching life win-win, and I wonder if optimism’s almost a little too cheap. That really what we like is to find the win-win. Nobody has to lose. We can all figure out how to walk forward and progress together. It might take a little more effort, it might take a little more communication, but actually seeking a win-win does feel good, and I think thatâs kind of what youâre up to.
Kit: Absolutely. And I think that no one likes to lose, and a lot of times people are at their worst kind of, and at their weakest, when they feel like they’ve lost something, right? And so-
Chris: Yeah, they kind of shrink in.
Kit: And I think people are their best selves when they feel like they’ve won something somehow. And I feel like those of us⌠and you do the same, I mean, you pour goodwill out into the community always. And you’re in a position now where you’re trying to do more of the same. And allowing people to participate and become part of that journey is the ultimate win-win. But you’re asking for help, right?
Chris: Absolutely.
Kit: And I also just feel like, again, back to these partnerships in Dallas, I think that it’s so obvious just as a community how much better we do when we work together. We accomplish big things here. I think that was a slogan for Dallas for a while. “We do big things” or “Big things happen here.” But it’s true. But the only way you can do that is through partnerships. And so it’s almost been so reinforced to me on both a personal and professional level that I don’t know any other way to be.
Chris: It’s really inspiring. I think there are a lot of people who will watch this, who struggle with feeling paralyzed when they aren’t certain of an outcome, especially when they look at the world and it’s so scary. And to approach it as there is a way to win â and maybe that’s not the best word to use â but you can progress, you can actually make good out of something bad, and there’s always a way, and that hopefulness seems to buoy you along, and that’s really great.
Kit: Yeah, absolutely.
Chris: So, I’d love to do a little bit of rapid fire Q&A about you. You game?
Kit: Sure.
Chris: Okay. Let’s start with something easy, more along the lines of your professional life. What’s the most unusual fundraising idea you’ve ever heard of or even tried?
Kit: It’s one I tried just because that’s the first one that’s coming to mind. I invent just weird things all the time.
Chris: I can’t wait.
Kit: This is just the first one. I’m sure that there are weirder ones, but this is one. But it was really fun. In the days before Uber, people would want to go to a party, but then they wouldn’t want to drive home because they’d want to be enjoying themselves.
Chris: Sure.
Kit: And so a lot of us in our twenties and thirties at the time, and forties, were talking about how much fun we all had going to these out of town weddings where we’d go and we’d spend a whole weekend visiting with people. So I came up with an annual fundraiser for a group that I was raising money for at the time called Slumber in the City. And we stayed at different hotels. And we would start, it would be a Saturday or a Saturday afternoon, you’d get there and there’d be cocktails at the pool or something, and then you’d go back to your room and change, and then we’d take over a ballroom in the evening. We’d have the band and the dinner and everything. Then there’d be an after party at a suite or something. The next morning, everybody was just kind of on their own. But it was so nice. Nobody had to drive. It was super successful. Then Uber came along, so we got rid of it because you don’t want to spend the night unless you have to. But it was so freeing because I feel like now even these days, to see some of my closest friends, I have to leave town to talk for more than just a couple of hours. And so it was really very successful and it was super fun. So, I do think of a lot of weird things.
Chris: Well, for what it’s worth, I missed out on the Slumber in the City, so if you bring it back, let me know.
Kit: I will.
Chris: Okay. How about what’s your favorite book? Or if that’s a little hard, ’cause that would be hard for me, and you are a lit major, right? So, what’s your favorite recent book? You could do either one.
Kit: It’s a novel about a woman who works in an aquarium and she befriends the octopus.
Chris: Oh, yes.
Kit: But they are so smart. I mean, I know that the narrator was making the octopus have these human qualities that I was listening to, but I feel like this whole other world opened up to me. So, I really was inspired by that. It was a sweet story, but all of a sudden I want to get to know… I want to see that movie now about the man who befriended the octopus.
Chris: Okay. So that is My Octopus Teacher.
Kit: Yeah, yes. I want to see that next.
Chris: I was going to say, I was thinking of the documentary. I’ve seen the documentary. Phenomenal. So, I’ll read the book. You watch the documentary.
Kit: Great.
Chris: There you go. What’s your favorite word, lit major?
Kit: I don’t know if this is cliche, but I’m thinking of things not from the way it sounds, but just from what it means. Something about unity, or whatever. I think I like, again, I think that that’s very much⌠I like pulling people together. I feel like you and I are very similar in that way. I like anything that inspires.
Chris: Brings people together.
Kit: Brings people together, inspires. I don’t know if that one’s risen to the top a little bit more in these divisive times we’re in, but something that shoots out positive vibes and is positive because it’s people being together.
Chris: Okay. One last easy one. What’s your favorite movie? It’s super challenging because I know that I like dark movies, so much so that a friend of mine in college gave me Shrek for Christmas one year because he said my DVD collection disturbed him. So, what do you think?
Kit: Well, I don’t know why exactly, but there are two that whenever they come on, I start watching. Shawshank Redemption and Good Will Hunting. No matter where I am, when those come on, I just sit down and I start watching them.
Chris: That’s why we are friends. That is my number one. Good Will Hunting is my number one movie.
Kit: Yeah, it’s such a great movie.
Chris: Such a great movie. I love that. Okay, before we end, give us one idea. What would you hope for Dallas over the next few years. Connected to what you do now, or just on a macro level, if you had a dream or a hope for the city in the near term, not a century from now, but in the next five to 10 years, what would you hope to see in our city?
Kit: I think that Dallas, as I mentioned, it’s a moment in time for Dallas right now. There are a lot of big, ambitious projects we’re taking on, including St. Michael’s. What you all have going on â we have going on, since I’m a member â a lot of projects like that are going to change the phase of our city. I think that we are, in a very smart way, trying to not get ahead of our skis and trying to do them well and collaboratively and learn from our own previous mistakes and acknowledge those, and learn from the mistakes other cities have made when maybe opportunity’s been thrust upon them too quickly. And so I think that if we can do what we have planned, and do it well, I’m really excited about the future of Dallas. I feel so fortunate and blessed to be living in this city right here, right now. And I just hope we don’t do anything to screw that up. I think as long as we can stay the course, I feel very bullish on Dallas right now.
Chris: I could not say it better myself. That’s exactly how I feel. Kit, it’s a pleasure. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today.
Kit: Thank you for having me. I enjoyed it.
Chris: Remember, you have the power to be fearless. Thanks.