The Impact of ACEs on the Economy and Business Community

Steve Adubato goes One-on-One with Linda Bowden, Regional President, PNC Bank, to discuss how the effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences impact the economy and business community.

5/7/19 #2216

Excerpt:

"This is Steve Adubato... We're at Morven... Morven Museum & Gardens. It's a historic night. A group of leaders from across the state, really from across the nation have come together to talk about adverse childhood experiences, and one of the... one of our colleagues who joins us is a longtime friend, Linda Bowden, who's a regional president of PNC Bank. Good to see you, Steve. Thank you for doing this tonight. It's our pleasure. You know, we've been doing a series called Right From the Start NJ, which is underwritten in large part by the Turrell Fund and by the Nicholson Foundation, but... and also PNC is one of our underwriters from a range of our programming... you and the bank have been involved in kids for a long time... Grow Up Great Initiative? Mm Hmm. On the education side? Mm Hmm. But this initiative tonight, talking about adverse childhood experiences... the connection? Well, you mentioned Grow Up Great, and of course, as you know, Grow Up Great is PNC's way of ensuring that children get a head start. And it's for children five and under, and especially... they're having access to education. And this is a terrific companion effort because of course with adverse experiences, education becomes secondary. Education becomes harder. It's more of a challenge. It's more difficult for children to focus. And so, while we are still, of course, very invested in Grow Up Great, we're happy to be supportive of this effort, as well. You know, this whole question of... we're learning more and more as broadcasters, as journalists, about adverse childhood experiences, you know, and some of the national experts have been here talking about... they're talking about... why not... when parents get divorced and there's a lot of acrimony, a lot of negativity, violence in the house, there's substance abuse, a child is separated from his or her parent... A whole range of experiences. They can have long-term effects on these children? They can. They absolutely can yeah. And I think that's very much what this group is trying to do, is ensure that these children have resilience, are able to overcome these experiences, can sort of get back into the learning mode that we talked about earlier. And it's interesting, you just listed a number of adverse experiences, but we didn't talk about physical abuse, sexual abuse, which unfortunately is out there and of course, the impact on children is just incredible. You know, Linda, you and I have had many conversations about, quote unquote, "corporate responsibility." Mm hmm. You know? Let me ask you something. Why... from PNC's perspective, why do you feel, not just for your bank, but for all corporations... why is it a corporate responsibility, or responsibility of corporations..."