On Wednesday, October 24, Vanessa Cooksey was in New York for the annual fundraising gala for SIFMA Foundation for Investor Education, where she is a board member.
“We raised $1.2 million, and this was in a very elegant event facility on Wall Street,” said Cooksey, senior vice president of community relations for Wells Fargo. “On Friday, I was in London with the Eisenhower fellows, talking about women’s leadership.”
Then on Monday, she was in El Paso visiting her team, where she spent time at a homeless shelter for veterans.
“One of my personal prayers is ‘Lord, help me to not ever have my privilege outpace my humanity,’ so that I can be in any space and connect authentically with people,” Cooksey said. “Because what I really want is if someone’s had an interaction with me, that they feel better because I showed up. Whether it’s on Wall Street or in El Paso, I want to make a positive difference in the lives of the people I meet.”
Cooksey leads the community relations efforts for 12 states in the central region with her team of 20 people. Anytime Wells Fargo invests dollars in the community through nonprofit grants or volunteer efforts, Cooksey’s team has a hand in facilitating that, she said.
“I love my job,” Cooksey said. “And what I love most about it are the people. I have an amazing team of professionals who wake up in the morning committed to making a difference in their local community.”
Cooksey has worked in philanthropy for the last 15 years at four different companies, including then-Anheuser-Busch and SUPERVALU.
“But at Wells Fargo, giving is part of our DNA,” Cooksey said. “So I don’t have to start with making the business case for giving or philanthropy here. I get to start with how can we have the greatest impact. Our team is super creative, and we can think about making a difference in the community from a broader perspective that includes taking risks and doing things that have never been done before because we have the people and the financial resources and the support to really dig into the work.”
The company has four main focuses to its philanthropy: preventing elder financial abuse, diversity and social inclusion through the arts, financial education, and protecting the environment.
“Before Vanessa had joined the company, we have been what I would call peanut-buttering our philanthropic giving across the community, which I think made us feel good but didn’t necessarily have a great impact,” said Joe Nadreau, head of Innovation & Strategy at Wells Fargo Advisors.
The thing that Cooksey has done for the company, Nadreau said, has been to put the pillars of philanthropic giving in place. The company gives to less charities but in more substantial amounts.
“That change, which was a courageous shift on her part and our part, has resulted in a much more effective way of giving in the community,” Nadreau said.
From a personal perspective, Cooksey is most proud of her family.
“Being a working mom, it’s hard work,” she said. “Being married is hard work. Being a parent is hard work and is the most rewarding work that I do.”
She doesn’t have a typical day or a 9-to-5 schedule because she is deeply involved in the community, she said. Some of those activities include being a board director at digitalundivided, VoteRunLead and vice chair of the Harris-Stowe State University Board of Regents. She is also a trustee at The Deaconess Foundation.
“So there are nights when I miss bedtime with my son,” she said.
Her schedule was probably most hectic when she was completing an Eisenhower Fellowship and MBA at Webster University all within 12 months in 2016 – while also maintaining her leadership position at Wells Fargo.
It was “no small feat,” she said.
As part of her Eisenhower Fellowship, she studied two things: preventing elder financial abuse and women’s leadership.
“I chose to go to Japan to understand the cultural and financial systems that support elders,” she said, “because the demographics of Tokyo and very similar to that of St. Louis because they both have an aging population and declining population.”
She also spent two weeks in Rwanda studying women’s leadership.
“Unbeknownst to me, 64 percent of their members of parliament are women,” she said, “so I said, ‘Surely there is something that I can learn about preparing women to run for office governing and just helping women leaders from a very young age through adulthood.’”
She considers herself a lifelong learner and everything she learns she brings back to St. Louis. As a result of her fellowship, Wells Fargo held a symposium and invited all of the elder-serving nonprofits in the St. Louis community. They also gave out grants.
“I’ve never really met anybody that is more passionate about improving the St. Louis community in which we live and work,” Nadreau said. “A lot of people, from my perspective, talk the talk of philanthropic giving and engagement in the community, but she truly walks the talk. And I admire that, and I think that the community is a much better place because it.”
