Kristin Stevens on Answering Growth With Welcome | Rock Solid

Bryan: Hi everybody, it’s Bryan Eisenberg and welcome to Rock Solid. Today is going to be a very special podcast. I think it’s the first time we have the daughter of a former guest, so it’s definitely a first. We have Kristin Stevens, who is Mayor Pro Tem and on city council. You’re on a bunch of volunteer boards, and I want to go into that, but I want to jump right into the fact that you grew up watching your dad basically create the city that he so selflessly wanted to create so that he could keep you around.

Kristin: Yeah.

Bryan: And now you’re responsible for doing that for hopefully your future grandkids someday. What does it feel like going from resident to a steward of this mission, to make this the best place to work, live, and play?

Kristin: Well, not even resident, just like, oh Dad, we’re going to go do another volunteer event. But truly, I love seeing the mark of my dad all around this community and being so appreciative of what he gave to myself and my brother through all of those experiences. And it wasn’t just city council. Both my parents have a history of being involved in different organizations. Sertoma, Rotary. My mom was in a group called Los Sertoma. My dad was in Sertoma, my mom was in Los Sertoma. That’s my childhood: Frontier Days down in downtown Round Rock with the original Sand Bash Shootout. I tell this story that I would know when it was Christmas vacation because the first day we would deliver Blue Santa.

Bryan: Mm-hmm.

Kristin: My dad would pick us up, we’d go deliver Blue Santa, and then we’d go eat breakfast tacos at the end. Or in the summers, my mom and I would go do Meals on Wheels together. So aside from just watching this community turn and evolve into what it is, it’s the legacy of stewardship that he instilled in myself and in my brother. We both took career paths that went into health care and service to others. I was a speech pathologist. My brother works for hospice care in Oregon. So, that legacy. But then yes, back to your question.

Bryan: Starting from the humble beginnings of less than 5,000 people in the 70s.

Kristin: To what it is now. It’s very interesting how the world works. They were living in Oak Hill when I was born, and they could have stayed in Oak Hill or they could have traveled north to the farmland of Round Rock, and they chose the farmland of Round Rock. Sometimes I wonder, if they hadn’t made that choice, what would our lives have been like? One of those oh wow moments. But I’m a typical resident, too. I would complain about traffic. I’d come home from college and say, what happened to the dove field where you and my brother hunted? It became La Frontera. Or when I was in high school, Forest Creek, that area. They also went to Round Rock High School.

Bryan: All the fields where the cows were.

Kristin: There was nothing between what’s A.W. Grimes now and Red Bud. Nothing. So I’m the typical resident that would say, we’re growing too fast, we’re growing too fast. But then on this side of it, I’m like, wow, this is an amazing place, and we sure have done it well. Not perfect, but well.

Bryan: We talked about it earlier. Round Rock and Williamson County is the fastest growing county in the country. It’s more than doubled economically in the last six years. As you mentioned, in the latest report from Chief Banks, our crime rates have gone down the last three years. Most of the crimes are not Round Rock residents, but people coming into Round Rock to enjoy everything we’ve built here. There’s so much to talk about in what’s developed here that, even if it’s not perfect, there’s a lot of formula that’s working.

Kristin: I think we know how to learn from our mistakes. Here, we are realistic. There’s nothing wrong with having big dreams and big goals, but also understanding the limitations of those. I will credit my dad and the mayors around his time for that: dream big, but also be realistic about it. When you can do that, you set a culture. We have a very accepting, welcoming, warm, very diverse culture here. We expect the best, but we accept and we bring in and we welcome everybody, and all ideas and all businesses, and the stories of the people that come here, like yourself, and they feel welcomed and get plugged in and engaged. That’s our secret sauce for sure.

Bryan: It’s okay to be conservative and liberal and love each other as neighbors and support each other. And that’s working. It’s working economically, socially, and in the education system. But I’m curious: growing up with him, was there ever a time where you said, I would never get into politics?

Kristin: Yes. I was accused in high school of my dad being in the mafia. And I’m like, really? Let’s think about that. I drive a $2,000 car that’s ten years old. My parents are humble. They came from honest means, and we had a nice life growing up, but by no means was there a lot of excess.

Bryan: The beginnings of disinformation.

Kristin: Absolutely. Back in the day somebody tapped me on the shoulder and said, is your dad in the mafia? And I’m like, no, that’s silly. So, silly stuff like that. And the service part came a lot faster than the political part. There was a lot of pushback of, it’s time to step up, it’s time to get involved, because service was so important to me. My job was so important to me. When I got elected to city council, I retired from health care because I did not feel like I could do both to the best of my ability. One of them was going to suffer. When I made the decision that I could not provide patient care at 110 percent, then it was time to leave a very amazing and rewarding career and find another career that would allow me to do the things I feel my dad raised me to do. But at the same time, I was leaving a very rewarding, fulfilling career working with children for 22 years. That was hard.

Bryan: I could imagine.

Kristin: I spent those early years, early marriage and young children, doing the getting involved: the YMCA boards, a lot of booster clubs, the Young Men’s Service League, things geared toward service to others. And then I waited until my kids got older to do this part.

Bryan: You’ve had to learn a lot from watching him over the years, and there were probably some very strong leadership lessons you use every day in your role as Mayor Pro Tem. What was one of those moments where you thought, that’s something I’ve got to internalize forever?

Kristin: I think my dad does a really good job of listening to all perspectives. Really and truly. He’s going to let you know if he doesn’t agree with you. He’s very strong, and he has thick skin. I’ve definitely learned how to have thick skin. But he does listen. I wouldn’t have thought that in my teenage years, but he does a good job of listening to all perspectives. He called me yesterday and wanted to know what was going on with this ordinance and why we were repealing it. He came in with a very strong opinion of what we should and shouldn’t be doing. When I explained to him the rationale, he became our biggest proponent and took care of informing the public.

Bryan: It was one of those issues I was curious about. Misinformation travels all over the place. I saw someone complaining about the amount of time they’re allowed to speak, and I thought, okay, I’m sure there’s a thread of truth, but not much. That’s just the way things travel today. And I saw his response on social media, and I thought, thank you for making it clear, because it made sense. People would rather run away with something today.

Kristin: There have been times where I’ve said, Dad, pipe down a little bit. And then the little angel on my shoulder says, no, no, he’s earned this right. He has sacrificed for this city for over 40, getting close to 50 years. He’s earned the credibility to be able to set the record straight. Maybe more in the beginning I was cringing, like, oh Dad. But now I’m like, no, no, he’s earned that right. And there are times we talk so that I can give him the correct information, so that the general public that respects and listens to him gets the right information.

Bryan: It’s a challenging job today. There’s a lot of noise out there. I also heard you hold a very distinct moment, and it’s coming up on an anniversary. Most people would not know that you were the first person to ever get engaged at the Dell.

Kristin: Oh gosh, what is he going to say? Yes. Okay, a very full circle moment, so stick with me. I graduated from Texas Tech, and I met my husband literally the first month of college. I said, I’m moving back. We dated for eight years before we got engaged. I said, I’m moving back home, you can come with me or you can go back to Fort Worth. He came here. In his mind, he wanted to be a home builder. He has an architecture degree and is in construction now, but he wanted to build homes. So he did that for about six months. I had transferred back to UT because I could graduate faster with my degree at UT than at Texas Tech. It’s a cohort program at Tech. So I’m sitting on a bus at UT after a final for the summer. By the way, my bus drivers at UT would listen to KVET, and occasionally I’d be on a bus and my dad would be talking to Bob Cole. I’m like, this is kind of awkward and embarrassing, but also very, very cool. I’m coming home in the evening. It was a night test. And my dad calls me. The Ryans had come here, they had decided they wanted to bring the baseball team, and we had to pass a hotel motel tax to be able to build that stadium. My dad was very proud of saying, and he’ll tell anybody, if you don’t go to a game, you’re not paying for anything as a resident. So he calls me and says, I think we’re going to win. Come to the victory party. And I said, Dad, I just took a final, I’m wiped. And he goes, give me five minutes. And I said, okay, Dad, I’ll be right there. So I ran into a friend from high school who actually ended up hiring my husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, to work for the company that he’s now the vice president of. Very full circle.

Bryan: So the bond, or the tax election, passed.

Kristin: My husband’s company actually did the site work or some concrete at the stadium. So yes, first Friday night fireworks game, he popped the question. It was Good Friday. His parents were here, and he had a relationship with the person providing the fireworks at the time, so we had a cool heart fireworks display out there. We’re going to be almost married for 25 years on Tuesday. So, like 26 years ago. Isn’t that crazy?

Bryan: That is absolutely incredible.

Kristin: So a super full circle moment. Now my older two sons go out to Dell Diamond with my dad. They love to go out there and do dollar hot dogs. Great time to spend with Papa. And my youngest son actually works for the Express. He’s a parking lot attendant.

Bryan: I’ll give him grief next time I drive in.

Kristin: Absolutely. There’s a guy that comes in from College Station to all the games, and he brings the parking lot attendants Gatorade every time he comes, and I’m like, oh, that’s so special. These stories are Round Rock. These stories are why we are what we are.

Bryan: It’s a city that’s approaching 150,000 people. It’ll be a blink of an eye, and yet it still has that small town feel. You can walk into the coffee shop, the restaurant, Dell Diamond, and you’re going to see your friends.

Kristin: Absolutely. I was having coffee with Craig and Rit the other day. Craig hadn’t gotten out of his truck yet, but I was standing in the store, and there was a gentleman sitting there with another gentleman having coffee, and Craig’s getting out and the guy says, that’s the mayor. I could hear him say that. Craig couldn’t hear him. He says, yeah, that’s the mayor, I’ll introduce you when he comes in. It’s a very humbling town. We’re very thankful for it.

Bryan: And now you’ve got three boys, and one of them just set another milestone showing that this legacy will continue here for a while. What is it you tell your boys about what you are working on today, that you hope Round Rock is there for them as they grow older?

Kristin: I think just a strong foundation. The way that we address the mission and vision of the city: we want a financially strong city that’s family friendly where you can live, work, and play. That’s what my dad used to tell people when they’d say, why do you do this? It’s a sacrifice, we spend a lot of time away from our families. But knowing that we’re laying that foundation so that hopefully they will find wives and have families of their own someday here, we’re solidifying our place. I said it at Momentum yesterday: we have a mark in Central Texas, but we also have a mark in Texas, in the United States, and in the world now. It’s funny. When I was dating my husband, he would go on trips with us, and the joke was that we’re going to go anywhere and run into somebody who knows either Round Rock or knows Charlie Culpepper. My husband came from Fort Worth, a big city, where that’s not typical like it is here. At the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, the people standing next to us, my mom taught their daughter. On an Alaskan cruise, getting in line to go to the captain’s dinner. In Mexico. We will go anywhere and there will be a connection. We’re going to be in Italy in a couple of weeks, and that’s the joke: who’s Papa going to run into here?

Bryan: If people followed you around for a day to watch what it’s like to be in local politics, what would surprise them the most?

Kristin: It’s very diverse, what we do. I would say what would surprise them is maybe a lack of understanding of what we really can and can’t do. The bounds of the legislature, and expecting more than we can actually do, because we have state laws we have to follow. But really, just not having a grasp of what it is that we actually do. And really cool things we get to do, from talking to elementary school kids to one of Michelle’s and my favorite things, family reunions. People come here all the time to have family reunions, and I was shocked by it, but they love to just meet people from Round Rock and get greeted and welcomed into our community. It’s not glitzy and glamorous.

Bryan: You’re not jet setting.

Kristin: No. I’m not going to watch the Olympics. I am welcoming a family reunion at the Baca Center, or a convention, or a ribbon cutting. But being present and being engaged in those things is what makes us who we are. It’s not the showy things. It’s the everyday relationships. It’s having coffees with constituents. If we didn’t do that, we wouldn’t be the place that we are today.

Bryan: I see it from being online. I made a decision over 30 years ago with my brother, when we went into business, that I would be the public figure online. It was a different time back then compared to what it is now. And I just imagine the craziness of people’s opinions and what they think. You’re getting paid off to put in data centers. The misinformation about the thing that took you four hours last night: are we allowed to speak 15 minutes, three minutes, five minutes? The challenge of that misinformation traveling so fast, and people saying you guys are on the take. How do you reconcile that when you go home and wash all that off?

Kristin: Thick skin. At the end of the day you can only know what you know. It’s interesting that you said that. I came home last night after this long meeting. We are very accessible. I’d say that about my neighborhood, my friends, and the community as a whole. That is something Charlie Culpepper taught me: you have to be in the community. You have to be out there every day. You can’t shy away from that. So I come home, it’s been a four-hour meeting, I get ready to go to bed, and I pop on Instagram for some reason. One of my very best friends, who literally lives across the street and down, sends me a reel of a woman who had a lot of misinformation about yesterday and was wanting to rile up the crowds. My friend messages me and says, what’s going on here? And I’m like, if you only knew. We had the same thing with the data centers, where I sat her down and explained it to her, and she had the oh, okay. So she’s back to being riled up. I called her before I came here today and said, let me just give you the real history. By the end she’s like, thank you so much for what you do. I know this takes time. I know it’s not glorious. But she goes, I really appreciate one, that you respond so quickly, and two, that you are willing to listen and give us the right information. To me, that’s what it’s about. Then she sees something on Instagram and says, hey, hold on, you don’t have your facts right, let me give you the facts. That’s the goal of what we do, through our university program and different things: getting the right information out. It’s real easy to sit in your house behind a computer and say whatever you want to say and take any spin on it today.

Bryan: Absolutely. And the more negative, the more the algorithms will promote it. That’s the nature of the algorithm. It feeds on it.

Kristin: Yeah. But then to sit across the table from somebody and say, let’s really talk through this together and see if we can come to a solution. That’s not easy. That’s hard. It takes setting your own personal agendas aside. It takes setting your preconceived notions aside. It really is having a conversation and communication. But man, it sure takes down all those walls really fast when it’s just you and me sitting and having coffee, and not a keyboard and not the mob mentality. Charlie had his naysayers, I can tell you the people back in the day, but it wouldn’t have gotten to the level of social media and mob mentality. It would have been dealt with the way we try to deal with it now, from the beginning.

Bryan: After we had the mayor on the show, we got a couple of inquiries from other politicians who wanted to be on the show, and I spoke with Brendan and Bill and we said, we’re not a political show. This is about looking at our community, community leaders and business leaders, and understanding why this is working so well. And I said, the only person I’m going to have sitting here is someone who I feel is a neighbor. They’re part of the community, they’re engaged in the community, I see them on a regular basis. I’m an outsider from Brooklyn, New York. I live on the edge of Round Rock, in Brushy Creek. My kids have gone to Round Rock High School. I have a business here. I’m invested here. And I see these people all the time. They’re the most welcoming people, happy to have conversations. And then you see this other side that just isn’t engaged. As the city continues to grow, how do we help them see the direction and vision that the mayors and city council have had for so many years? The track record has not strayed.

Kristin: I think you have to get them involved. In my first campaign, the slogans around Texas started being like, put the walls up, we’re closed for business, don’t come here, we’re crowded. A long time ago, I adopted the mentality of, why would we say that? Instead of saying don’t come here, we’re closed, say welcome. How can I get you involved? That is something I really enjoy doing: sitting down and meeting people that have just come to town and saying, tell me what your passion is.

Bryan: Because you’ve seen it all. You know where the roots of everything have grown.

Kristin: I do, and I love it. I’ve gotten to do some mentoring with Leadership Round Rock. I did some Ascend mentoring. I do Leadership at the Y classes. What I tell people is, we are not a community lacking for service and people wanting to serve.

Bryan: Or missions to serve.

Kristin: Or missions to serve. And the problem in our community, if we can flip that coin, is that once the community finds you, everybody says, I want you for this, I want you for that. So I caution people who want to dip their toes into community service and leadership: find where your passion is, because there are plenty of missions, and your service can easily get diluted because you raise your hand so many times. That’s probably part of why it took me so long to get to this role. My focus was on serving the communities around my children. So I tell people all the time, you say you want to get involved, that’s fabulous, but be very strategic about it. There’s a difference between just showing up and actually being boots on the ground, being present, doing your job.

Bryan: I live that every day, not only with what I do, but with what my wife allows me to do in terms of all the service to the community.

Kristin: We can’t do it without our spouses.

Bryan: One hundred percent. As you said, we run a home care agency, so she’s one of the biggest advocates for seniors. She’s the community educator for the Alzheimer’s Association, teaching classes at the Round Rock Public Library. She sits on the aging services council, adult protective services, county health resources.

Kristin: All the things.

Bryan: But she struggles sometimes to say no. You found that balance, saying I can’t do my full-time job now, and I’m a realtor, because that gives me flexibility. What was the trigger that helped you understand, okay, I’m getting overloaded?

Kristin: I think it was the diluting, of not feeling like you’re really making a difference. Sure, my name might be on a bunch of boards, but am I really doing the work? That was probably the moment. If I can’t do something to the best of my ability, then it’s not worth it. It’s not worth it to that organization, it’s not worth it to me as a person, and it’s not worth the sacrifice of being away from my family. Same as my dad, I’m an all-in, 100 percent person. It’s either all in or thank you, but no thank you.

Bryan: If someone is listening to this from outside of Round Rock, or maybe they’ve been a Round Rock resident and haven’t really connected, what’s the most important piece of advice you can give them so they get the most out of their Round Rock experience, besides the donuts?

Kristin: No kidding. I’ve had a few dozen of those in my day. In fact, when I was growing up, that was the reward. If you got a hundred on your test, my mom would drive us through. At that time you ordered a dozen donut holes and you got like five dozen donut holes. They’d fill the whole bag up. But I would say, get out of your house. You don’t have to join a board or commission. You don’t have to join a nonprofit organization. Yet. If we do our job right, you’re going to want to give back to your community that’s pouring into you. So the first place you start is just getting out of your house. There are so many activities here.

Bryan: A mutual friend, Will Williams, just put out that he’s looking for 100 volunteers. When this comes out, the Christmas and Thanksgiving efforts are about to start. You just want to pack some food for somebody. Just show up and be part of that community.

Kristin: Go to a festival. Go to Music on Main. Go to Market Days. Just be in your community. You chose it for a reason, so why would you not get everything out of it that you can? We’re blessed that we have a staff, we have a chamber, we have nonprofits that also believe in pouring into their community. Why would you not take advantage of that? When you take advantage of that, the isolation goes away, the keyboard warrior goes away, the nefarious criminals go away, because you’re invested in your community.

Bryan: Thank you for all the investments you’ve made in our community, and of course your dad, and thank you for your continued leadership. People will say our council people are not accessible, but if they wanted to reach you, what’s the easiest way to get in touch with you?

Kristin: Call me. I give out my phone number all the time, and I answer my phone. I’m a realtor, so my number’s on signs all across town. Call me is easy. Send me an email. But we’re accessible. We love to meet with people, and I would say that for all seven of us. We love our community, so we are all open and willing to talk. I would say that about my family, too: Charlie and Kathy and my husband and my kids and my brother. We always want to meet people. We always want to be surrounded by people.

Bryan: Thank you so much.

Kristin: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.