Momentous in so many ways for so many people, 2016 has been a pivotal year for Bill Bradley. January 1 of this year was his first day as vice president of community affairs for Anheuser-Busch after working 24 years at the company in a wide variety of increasingly senior and responsible positions.
Bradley grew up in North St. Louis (“basically on the corner of Marcus and Labadie,” he said) for the first nine years of his life, before his family moved to Spanish Lake. He went to high school at Hazelwood Central, then earned his associate’s degree from St. Louis Community College – Forest Park, where he also played baseball. His bat and glove were critical to his transferring to Birmingham-Southern College in Birmingham, Alabama, where he graduated with a degree in business (with an emphasis in marketing).
He was recruited to Anheuser-Busch by Lincoln Scott, an African-American human rights professional (since retired), who exercised at the Vic Tanny health club where Bradley worked shifts while he tried, and failed, to make it as a professional baseball player.
“I think, candidly, it was at a time when Anheuser-Busch, like many other corporations, were looking to expand the diversity of the pool of candidates they were looking at,” Bradley told The St. Louis American.
One of the first questions Scott asked him was whether he had a degree, because many of his peers working at the gym did not. Suddenly that business degree, which was not helping him get signed to a Major League Baseball club, came in handy. “I think that advanced the conversation,” Bradley said. “That was probably a qualifier.”
As Bradley the ballplayer already knew, getting a look was not the same thing as getting a job. After he submitted a resume to human resources, as directed, he went through 18 months of interviews for different job opportunities at A-B that he was not, in the end, offered.
“I just continued to do my due diligence, like you did back then – you know, persistence and follow-ups,” Bradley said. “Back then, it was thank-you letters. Then you just dealt with that disappointment of not getting offered a position.”
The time spent pulling shifts at the gym was not wasted professionally, however. “It was a great bridge for me coming from being a college athlete, being very comfortable in that environment,” Bradley said. “It taught me some interpersonal skills from a business standpoint, some selling skills that I did not previously have.”
It was after Bradley had been promoted into management at the health club that A-B called him in about yet another position – this time, as a member of the contemporary marketing team, one in a class of 40 individuals, 20 males and 20 females.
“I’m just going to go down there, and it’ll be a waste of time,” Bradley thought. Then, he thought, “It never hurts to get some practice on your interviewing skills,” and he knew that working at the gym was not a career opportunity for him.
This time, he got the job at Anheuser-Busch. Twenty-four years on the job later, he is now a vice president of the company. The American talked to him about adjusting to his new leadership role.
The American: So what exactly do you do for A-B?
Bill Bradley: I lead our team that works in our philanthropic space. I manage our foundation, the Anheuser-Busch Foundation, which is a charitable arm that’s been around since 1975. I also lead a team that focuses on community efforts centered around economic development, education, support of the military, and disaster relief. We also focus on volunteerism, primarily through our employees.
The American: What is new to you in this experience?
Bill Bradley: Coming from the marketing space, 20 years on the beer marketing side of things, and then the last four years on what I would call the responsibility marketing piece of our business, I’m now moving in the more service-oriented philanthropic space. Certainly, my stakeholders that I’m dealing with are much different than in my previous roles at Anheuser-Busch.
In many ways, they have many objectives at the end of the day. Prior to now, for the most part, everyone was seeking to sell beer – responsibly, of course. Now it’s really more about serving the needs of that particular charitable organization constituency, so that we are seen as great community partners. But, certainly, we are seen as a resource, and the approach that our stakeholders bring to us from that standpoint is a little bit different than in my previous roles.
One of the benefits that I’ve had moving into this role was that my predecessor, Margarita Flores, sat a few workstations over from me for the previous four years. So even though our disciplines were different, I had the opportunity to see what she was doing, kind of on the periphery – and certainly participate, just as an employee, in some of the volunteer efforts that she was leading. I brought my kids out to different events, like Habitat for Humanity builds. So I had a good working knowledge prior to coming into the role. But, like most things, until you actually get into it and start peeling back the layers, you don’t really know.
The American: There must be organizations whose existence you did not know of last December that now you are dealing with or looking at their grant proposals.
Bill Bradley: As a native St. Louisan and being back here in St. Louis for the last 13 years or so, to work at the corporate headquarters I had a working knowledge of many of the charitable organizations that are in the city at large and then certainly the ones that we did business with or that we’ve contributed to.
I will say this: The American Red Cross, which is one of our long-time partners, I knew what they did topically in terms of disaster relief. I knew that in terms of our emergency drinking water donation program we worked through them, and of course I knew that they did blood drives at corporations like ours. But I really didn’t understand, until starting to work with them, the scope of what they did in terms of disaster preparedness – working with corporate organizations, schools and municipalities to prepare for disasters ahead of time.
The American: Did you internalize that or bring it back to headquarters?
Bill Bradley: We have been a supporters of their disaster relief program, so corporately I think we’re in good shape. Personally, however, I did think about it, and I thought, “Man, are we prepared should a tornado hit? What can we do in our own house in terms of being ready for a long-term power outage?”
The American: Did you apply for this vice president position, or were you sort of fingered for it?
Bill Bradley: Margarita had planned to retire for the better part of a year. The department head at the time (who has since left the company) in a casual conversation asked if I would have any interest in succeeding her. I expressed interest, and we really didn’t discuss it again for another six or eight months.
I continued to do what I’ve always done, which is kind of keep my head down, go about my job and treat people the way I want to be treated. And that’s, for the most part, worked out for my professional and personal lives.
When the time got closer and she was actually going to leave, then, of course, the conversations became more serious, more structured. So I would have to say I was initially approached and kind of tapped as her successor.
The American: I assume it was a promotion with a salary increase. I understand that would be enough reason to want the job, but are there other reasons?
Bill Bradley: Yes, absolutely. On the professional side, you know, you want to continually be challenged. A new challenge was very interesting to me, certainly.
And then, you don’t think about this when you’re going through it, but my late father, William Bradley Sr., was a St. Louis city police officer for 35 years. My mother, Amanda Bradley, was a registered nurse for the City of St. Louis. Most of that time she worked for the old Homer G. Phillips Hospital. So I grew up in a household of civil servants, really.
And through volunteerism, through work with the church, Central Baptist Church, growing up, my parents exposed me to doing things for other people. So it’s really kind of a natural fit for me. It’s very comfortable for me helping others and trying to raise my children that way. Service to others can certainly be in many ways more rewarding for the servant than for the people who are being served.
