Why the Freda Johnson winners are bullish on munis

Transcription:
Lynne Funk (00:03):
Hello everyone and welcome to another Bond Buyer podcast. I’m Lynne Funk, executive editor at The Bond Buyer, and I am very excited to welcome this year’s public and private sector. Freda Johnson Award winners to the show today.

Megan Kilgore is auditor of the city of Columbus, Ohio. And Virginia Wong is partner and practice group leader at Nixon Peabody. Now they are extraordinary women who have impressive resumes, but we’re going to get back to that in a minute. I want to talk for a second about the Freda Awards. For our listeners who maybe aren’t familiar, they’re given by the Northeast Women in Public Finance and named for Johnson, a founding board member of the organization and executive vice president and public finance division head at Moody’s Investor Service for nearly two decades. This award is given annually to trailblazing women, one in the private sector and one in the public sector, who exemplify the qualities Johnson brought to the industry.

Also for our listeners, along with Kilgore and Wong, 12 other honorees from the public and private sectors were chosen by the Northeast Women in Public Finance as trailblazing women in Public Finance. Johnson and the Northeast Women in Public Finance will formerly present the awards at The Bond Buyer’s Deal of the Year Awards gala in New York City on Dec. 5th. So back to our Freda winners. Welcome to you both.

Virginia Wong (01:24):
Good morning to you.

Megan Kilgore: Morning Lynne.

Lynne Funk (01:27):
Alright, great to have you again. Let’s get into the thick of the conversation though. I want to talk about obviously the work that you both have done, but I figured we’d start to talk a little bit about the industry itself. Looking at the past 20 months or so, the muni market has faced tremendous challenges from rising interest rates and macroeconomic policy uncertainties to the increasing cost of capital and mixed investor interests, to say the least. But in the past few weeks, it does appear that the market is in somewhat of a rebound and a lot of folks are feeling more bullish on munis. From your seats, what is your sense of the industry heading into year end and into 2024? Perhaps both challenges and opportunities. Virginia, can you kick us off here?

Virginia Wong (02:16):
Sure. Thanks Lynne. I became the practice group leader in public finance at Nixon Peabody approximately 20 months ago. And as you mentioned, Lynne, that’s just about when our markets started to face some real challenges. So I don’t know whether that was my fault in and of itself or just bad timing, but I can say, to be ending the year with a much more robust market than when we started. 2023 was a challenging year for our market and required participants to consider new options. We saw growth in securitization structures, growth in issuers, offering serial and green bonds, which were well received on the transactions we were involved with. And we also continued to see a steady increase in tender and tender and exchange transactions. And I expect that we’ll continue to see those issuers utilize these things and these options as a way to take advantage of market conditions going forward. We also expected to see, but haven’t seen much, of people taking advantage of the higher interest rate with respect to investing proceeds or debt service accounts, reserve accounts in investment agreements. And we are thinking that maybe we’ll see a bit more of that in 2024.

Lynne Funk (03:43):
Great. Megan, you’re the issuer in the room here. What are your thoughts on the market?

Megan Kilgore (03:47):
Well, I’ll kick things off by sharing a little bit about what the heck is an auditor. It’s such a nebulous term and as you both know, it really does differ across the nation, right? The term auditor here is really, it should be more like CFO or COO type role in Columbus. And while debt issuance, investor relations, a certain of the capital management all falls under my office here, so does a lot of other things, including the entire revenue side of the city. I’d love to take this from that lens.

From a challenge perspective, it’s been really an incredible challenge to lead through the uncertainty of the last couple of years. What I mean by that is every model, every revenue assumption, we’ve always kind of prided ourselves, like many big cities, on a lot of stability because you have, especially with major employers, diverse economies, you found over time you can kind of get a metric or at least a range for what it’s like for your government to go through a tough time, a good time and places in between.

(04:59)
But really no one had a model for what it was like going into a pandemic and then coming out of it with what was the total amount of federal money, like $5.4 trillion. And so for us, it’s really been trying to be as thoughtful to proactively plan for what we thought was going to happen and then to constantly be in a state of adjustment and be very, very comfortable in that state of adjustment. And so with respect to large cities right now, infrastructure is still necessary. And not only is it necessary, but I view this and I hope this sounds as optimistic as I intend it to when you have things like coming out of a pandemic. I love history and during the actual pandemic itself, I opened up from my predecessor was an incredible historian, and he kept, I mean, I may be honest, he was probably by more of a historical hoarder, but he kept a lot of really, really good stuff.

(06:03)
So during the pandemic, I opened up the annual reports from 1919, 1920, and maybe Virginia, you talked to some of your clients who went through this stuff too. But it was really comfortable and comforting, I should say, to go back and read about how the city of Columbus responded in 1919, in 1920 to the Spanish flu. And what was incredible is in central Ohio, we had this beautiful rebirth of arts and culture that happened in the 1920s. And so as auditors with my CFO hat on of the city of Columbus, I’ve really been intentional about rebuilding thoughtfully and trying to make as much opportunity happen out of the consequences of the pandemic. So as we look at maybe underutilized office spaces, how can we lean in with our purchasing power and maybe help create the city that we aspire to be in the next five to 10 years?

So as we kind of look in the next couple of years, the opportunities that we have, and I believe this for a lot of places across the country, it’s trying to optimize conditions. It’s trying to be as thoughtful as possible to whether it’s issuing bonds based upon the yield curve and what makes the most financial sense, but also trying to thoughtfully invest in your local economy, building infrastructure that will actually help you create the city, the structure, the revenues, what have you that you want to be in the next 5, 6, 7 years.

Lynne Funk (07:37):
That’s really interesting. And I know a lot of folks probably went back to 1919, 1918 during that time. It’s true. I remember it was one of the first things, actually, I wasn’t my personal idea, but somebody else had told me about it too. And this is a good segue because I want to talk about, you mentioned infrastructure and you both from your seat, Megan, in government, you’re creating the infrastructure. And Virginia, you’ve worked with a lot of big issuers on infrastructure projects that just have to get done right? No matter what the market is like, both of you and from your seats, it has to get done. So what the question I want to pose to you both is with politics at the federal level, let’s face it as sort of unsteady at best, how do you see state and local governments playing a role in moving ahead with financing infrastructure? And I can ask if either of you ever participated in perhaps the IIJA or the IRA? Megan, would you want to start on this? And I want to hear from Virginia as well.

Megan Kilgore (08:39):
Absolutely. We have with certainly here in central Ohio, one of the largest economic development projects in the country, and that’s the new Intel chip plant. When you have something of that size, we have to build out the infrastructure necessary for it to be successful, and that includes the most important water and sewer as well as roads and things like that. So infrastructure is continuing to your very good point. And our objective right now is to try and keep that on track. But you can imagine when you’re competing with, especially construction folks, laborers, it’s complicated. So we found ourselves, we are ready to roll, but we’re definitely experiencing some labor shortage.

With respect to the next couple of years, we are absolutely taking advantage of anything that we can. The IRA is coming at an interesting time because it’s probably, and I can speak to the Build America Bonds program and stuff like that, one of the most complex pieces, almost like this nebulous body of opportunity, but it’s incredibly complex and it’s coming at a time when we have a staffing crisis here in government. So I’m particularly interested in finding ways to effectively use the IRA and talking about it, doing a lot of work with the GFOA now and other industry groups to be able to communicate a lot of information and a lot of nuance. It’s all complicated and requires a lot of employees. So I’m curious, Virginia and all of your great experience, are you seeing the same amongst your clients?

Virginia Wong (10:16):
Yes, Megan, we are seeing quite a bit of that. One of the things that’s been interesting about the infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act is that it gives our clients additional tools and funding sources. Some of them have been more helpful than others. For instance, we’ve done quite a bit of work with market participants in various capacities and trying to take advantage of the funding for broadband projects and leveraging the IRA’s tax credits by municipal utilities. And frankly, some of that has been difficult to do. Trying to leverage those resources and credits without additional guidance has proven to be quite difficult for some of our clients. And so we are looking forward to working with the institutions that Megan just mentioned, GFOA and Treasury and the IRS in getting additional guidance to help us implement the tools in the way they were intended to be used. I don’t know, Megan, if you have found some challenges in implementing some of the financing programs that have been made available under those acts?

Megan Kilgore (11:33):
I think it’s interesting. I applaud anytime you have something as expansive, whether the infrastructure act, inflation reduction act — the intent is incredible and the power of what you could do is also incredible. Where I see the most barriers to entry right now, I would say are in two buckets. One is simply the complexity. So figuring out what is the most, let’s say highest and best use of funds, how to go about doing so, especially with the nuance of the programs.

But I would say the second piece is simply a lot of our governments across our country are trying to figure out what their new normal is. And I was a municipal advisor for a few years, and I’m really speaking more from that hat right now. We’re in an enviable position here in central Ohio where population’s growing. Our economy is growing, and so essentially we have more people who have more jobs and therefore we have a stronger tax base that affords us the opportunity to keep growing forward.

(12:41)
Whereas some governments, especially in the parts of the Midwest I’m very familiar with, are really trying to figure out what is our new normal. And just as an example, fixing a bridge, absolutely time for due maintenance on that bridge, it might be in competition with a aspirational project to be funded with the IRA. And that’s kind of where I see is, where do these IRA funded projects fit into the overall capital plan of certain governments? They still require prioritization. I think some governments, they see kind of the big opportunities and they may not fully unpack all of the financial details. Personally, just to help with this as much as possible. I’m doing a lot of speaking. There’s a couple of really great organizations I’m particularly fond of. America Is All In, run by former EPA director, Gina McCarthy, came to Columbus and spoke about all of the robust list of products and projects under the IRA and I’m doing a lot of public speaking now around it, not just what we’re doing here in Columbus, but especially geared towards smaller governments, rural counties, helping them make sense of it, which I think is really important.

(14:05)
Just weighing all the options and having everything on the table.

Lynne Funk (14:09):
That’s very interesting. I think a lot of complaints we’ve heard, or not, maybe not even complaints, but challenges with particularly the IRA is the complexity of it. I find it very interesting, Megan, that you’re working with these smaller governments because as we know in the muni industry, Missoula, Montana, is quite different than New York City.

Megan Kilgore (14:29):
Right.

Lynne Funk (14:30):
So one of the reasons that the Freda award is given, one of the actually attributes that it requires is your ability to engage and mentor a younger generation of public finance professionals, both women and men. I think one of the things that when we talked prior to this to prep for this Virginia, I think is interesting is you mentioned from what we learned from Covid, right, this hybrid environment, you lose the sort of printer conversations and water cooler conversations. So I wanted to start with you, Virginia. You had some great stories to relay here. How has this changed the dynamic for working with younger folks?

Virginia Wong (15:13):
Sure, Lynne. I mean, when I was a junior lawyer, I got to spend a lot of time just in the room at the printer doing offering documents, helping draft and finalize offering documents or in at closings, putting together closing rooms and accumulating signatures and putting documents together. And then working group meetings used to be face-to-face, and you would do a page-by-page of an offering document or negotiate a new loan agreement or bond resolution, and the associated covenants face-to-face in a room with sometimes 30 people. And I learned so much just being in those rooms and being around those people, many of whom were formal or informal mentors to me and became role models to me. And so I really fell in love with public finance and seeing how the public interest got taken into account when those deals were being negotiated and just developing the relationships with the other people in the room, people who were junior when I was junior, those are still people that I work with now.

(16:28)
So that is something that in the post-Covid world, our junior people just don’t have the same opportunity to take advantage of. Closings are very rarely in person. Nobody goes to the printer anymore. Working group sessions are abbreviated, usually. We just don’t get the same kind of interaction and you don’t get the same informal mentoring and opportunities that used to be available to us. So one of the things that’s important to me as a practice group leader is making sure that the people in our group get those opportunities either by joining an industry group, NABL, the National Association of Bond Lawyers, or becoming involved in GFOA or the Public Power Council or BDA or name it. There’s a wide variety of them. And getting involved in affinity groups that support the public finance practice, the Northeast Women in Public Finance being one that’s near and dear to my heart. But we also have people very involved in a wide variety of affinity groups that support the practice area and give them a chance to meet their colleagues, not only in other law firms, but at banks, at issuers and foster that sort of important relationships that can help carrying through what is hopefully a long career and public finance. Megan, I don’t know if you’re seeing the same sort of challenges in getting people that kind of exposure to others within the industry.

Megan Kilgore (18:11):
I completely, and I’m laughing a little bit because I’m thinking about, do you remember when, and perhaps Lynne or Virginia, you had this when you were growing up, it was a little origami thing you’d make out of paper and you’d write on the inside the jobs that you wanted, you dreamed of how many kids you wanted to have, who you were going to marry. Do you remember this game?

Lynne Funk (18:35):
I absolutely do. Yes,

Virginia Wong (18:37):
Of course.

Megan Kilgore (18:37):
The fortune teller, right? It was a little, just a fortune teller game. And I remember writing what I wanted to do, and surprisingly, the word auditor was not mentioned in one of my aspirational jobs. But I remember thinking whenever you landed on, because you had to do the house thing and it was a mansion, was a mansion, apartment, shack, house, whenever you landed on mansion, it was like you would hit it big. And what’s so interesting now is a lot of the, we’ve done an incredible amount of technology modernization because of that. In the office, we’ve really put ourselves in a position of being able to competitively recruit, I would say world-class, especially technology-minded folks, and a lot of whom are on the younger side. They’re a few years out of college and so forth. And what’s interesting is their idea of the American dream is being able to be very much in control of what makes them happy.

(19:38)
And so that might not be, and this has been very important for me to learn as an employer. It’s not necessarily that mansion — it’s being able to go and explore Iceland for three weeks. It’s being able to go and basically be very maybe transient and experience different parts of this globe. It’s been really a great learning opportunity for me, especially how to be super creative and what has historically been a very rigid public sector in terms of employment. So that’s one thing that I’ve really learned is how to try and be more creative, giving the sometimes rigid lines of traditional public sector employment. The second thing I’ve learned is that I think in my soul, I am 95 years old because I have really struggled more than I probably care to admit with the transition, me personally, into much more of a remote world. Now, first thing is I’m a total extrovert.

(20:41)
I absolutely acknowledge that. But the second thing is I really value the interpersonal and I really value simply the proximity to people. And when I think about my job, my job as a leader, we’ve got a very large office here. My job is to have good conversations. It’s how we collectively in the office learn about problems. We create possibilities, we invent ideas, and we ultimately turn those ideas into reality. And so to be able to transform the kind of art of conversation into an online or remote format, it has been challenging for me. So I’ve intentionally tried to build in for especially remote workers, very intentional in office time where we’re all able to collaborate. It’s a necessary requirement of especially a high-performing culture right now, in my opinion. But it’s finding the right balance and it’s okay, it’s imperfect. We’re constantly growing. A big team is just that.

(21:53)
It’s always evolving, and I’m trying to be very responsive to that and just see where our harmonies best lie. But I tell you still, I’m in the office every day. I also start my morning with The Bond Buyer, which not everyone would necessarily do because I love it, right? It’s just part of, I love this, I love, love the structure, and I love just kind of my way to start my day. It’s been very, very, very important to me personally. But I’m curious, Virginia, when you’ve had different mentors and so forth, without naming a name, who has been the hardest boss you’ve ever had and what would that person have been like in a remote environment?

Virginia Wong (22:36):
Gosh, Megan. I think the hardest bosses are the people who were the most difficult to communicate with, even if you were sitting right across from them. And I think in a remote environment that would become impossible. One of the things that we’ve been trying to work with people on internally is, and we also have a fair share of people who we are remote most of the time people are asked to be in the office two days a week. And so we try to coordinate making sure that as many people are in the office on those two days a week as possible. I’m usually in three days a week just to try to make sure we’re covering as many of those days when people are in as possible. And we try to plan, practice, group events, continuing education group lunches, just to try to continue to foster the kind of environment that we would like to have in terms of learning and growth and open door conversations, and just making sure that people are involved and engaged at every level.

Megan Kilgore (23:51):
The hardest boss. That conversation piece is really interesting, is like that hardest boss, the lack of communication. Had you not had that in person, I would imagine it would’ve been very difficult to infer things like context or read body language and stuff like that, right?

Virginia Wong (24:09):
Absolutely. And so one of the things that we’re finding now is that some of our mid-level people are giving assignments by email, and so much can get lost in that exchange. So don’t give an assignment by email, pick up the phone, call the person set up a Zoom or a teams meeting. I always feel like if I can’t hear it in your voice or see it in your face that you understand what I’m asking for and want to talk about, then we’re just going to spin our wheels a bit. So even when we’re remote, finding those opportunities to have those personal touches is super, super important. Wouldn’t you say, Megan?

Megan Kilgore (24:52):
For sure. I think the most that I’ve learned, especially with those more difficult or tough bosses, they were usually in a taxi after a meeting that either went really well or more importantly, probably not so well, or on the train following a bond pricing that was particularly complex. Those that you can’t, it’s really hard to replicate. I don’t say you can’t, but I think it’s hard. But I’d say that the kindest, but also the most, let’s say strict, the strictest boss I ever had was my predecessor. So I started out working with him a long, long, long time ago, and I ultimately was the debt manager for the city of Columbus then. And just to catch all the listeners up, I was public sector and then private sector, and I’m putting the sandwich bun on top, coming back to the public sector to run for office.

(25:47)
And so during the time when I was first working for my predecessor, now he is a legend. He has won, I think, every award in the public finance community. His name’s Hugh Dorrian, an absolute legend. And lemme tell you, he’s such a legend that he even won a medal from the Pope himself. So just so you know, I had big shoes when I decided to run for office. I had really, really big shoes to fill. But this guy, old school, and I learned so much from him, but he was, I just, how do I put this? I can probably tell you everything about him by just explaining a quick story. My first day in office now, when I was first working with him, he was very, very strict, but he had everyone, you had to be in butts in seats at 8:00 AM sharp. Were before.

(26:34)f you’re a minute late, you’re late. The night before I had, I must’ve been a pricing or something, I’m coming back. Maybe I got back at 11 o’clock from New York or something, and I come into the office and I get in here at 8:05 and I remember that look, the look that said everything Virginia, you just knew. And eventually I’m like, you know what? I’m exhausted. I had been in New York for two days. It had been a brutal pricing because of some geopolitical stuff. And I went into his office and I’m like, sir, I know I came in a few minutes late, but I have to understand, I got in about 11:30 last night and I was just tired, I guess. And he just looked at me and he’s like, you were late. I was like, yeah, I was. But the thing is, he just had some values that he held really dear, and that’s okay. You knew where you stood. But I’ll tell you, the thing that I cherish the most was just that his being able to be walking in a hallway with him, walking to a meeting and just talking about what had happened. And I learned more about professionalism and the ethics of public service responsibility and just how to handle oneself, especially when things were maybe a tough negotiation. And I watched him and I learned so, so much. I just don’t know how I could have ever replicated that remotely.

Lynne Funk (27:58):
I would agree. I think that’s one of the things that we face here. I can tell you in 2019, the three of us would be sitting in a room in the Bond Buyer’s offices, most likely recording this together. And it even makes a difference on these. It’s difficult. We can’t see each other, we can’t read our body language. Just see who wants to, oh, I’d like to jump in here and say something, but so it’s challenging. But this is great. Thank you both so much. We’re coming up on time here. I want to ask one more thing, and I guess I’d be remiss not to ask you both about equity in the public finance industry. Have we made progress here? What still needs to be done? Virginia, would you want to just start on your thoughts on that broadly?

Virginia Wong (28:43):
Sure. Thanks Lynne. So when I started my career 28 years ago at Nixon, there were no women partners in the public finance group. I was very lucky that I had wonderful mentors in Art McMahon and John Bold and many others, but there weren’t female role models within the firm that you could look to in terms of how a career might play out with the family and other obligations. But I had so many wonderful role models outside of the firm, both out of the law firms at banks and at clients. And that was what really inspired me and kept me going and helped me to believe that I could have a career in public finance, a long-term career in public finance. And it’s remarkable to me over the course of my career to see how much more diversity there is within not only the firm, also within our market.

At Nixon now almost half the partners in the public finance group are women, 60% of our associates are diverse. That was certainly not the case when I started, or even maybe 15 years ago. So to me, it’s always been very important that our group and its members reflect our clients and that we are able to build on the benefits that having diverse voices in the room or able to be considered in terms of the advice we give to clients and the way we view our interactions with them. Megan, I don’t know if that’s been your experience as well, if you’ve seen that kind of change over time.

Megan Kilgore (30:34):
Oh, for sure. I think it’s really, we’re going to come at this from two different angles like Virginia did. One is as individuals, it’s what we choose to do with our platform. And I know Virginia and I spoke about, we talked together about just what the Freda award meant. And what’s really special about Freda Johnson is that not only did she break a number of glass ceilings to lead very, very sizable organizations, but she also never lost sight of what she could do beyond her role because of her platform. And that’s something that I know Virginia and I are holding ourselves to being the honorees this year. And so to that as individuals, I am the first woman and the first out member of the LGBTQ community to be elected to this office. And so as now in this position, we have to Virginia in her position of leadership, it’s really choosing whether to live our lives complacently or to act with the courage to do what’s right.

(31:50)
And so because of that, I really have, I would say, a focus in the next couple of years to expanding my role in helping to make sure more LGBTQ elected officials, candidates have access if they’re interested to public service. I never want what are perceived as the complexities of public service to get in the way of good people running for office. Also, similarly is really focusing on what I think is an incredibly difficult conversation in the public finance world right now, which is the cost of inequality. I think that local governments are especially, and I really do mean this, I believe that local governments are kind of the salvation of our country right now. The work that is being done at a local level that is keeping our country not only moving forward, but building the infrastructure into the future. And there’s a lot of confusion at the national level right now, and I’ve been teaching at the John Glenn College for I think nine years, and I’ve never had more students than I do right now saying to me, are we in the right field?

(33:10)
They saw Congress without a Speaker. You see all of the geopolitical tensions you see, I mean, we talk about this a lot. I teach a public finance class, but all of the outcomes of these statewide bans, and these are things that my predecessor never had to contend with. The difficulties of his leadership were quite a bit different. And so I say, I think local governments right now, leaders especially, are being tasked with incredible amounts of complexity. And the leaders as well as the governments that are going to go from good to great, good to spectacular, are going to be those who are able to thread the needle of that incredible complexity and do so while keeping an eye to how to create a more just and equal history for all of us.

Virginia Wong (34:07):
Megan, it’s interesting. I also teach a public finance course, so we’re going to have to exchange syllabuses.

Megan Kilgore (34:14):
Happy to.

Virginia Wong (34:15):
But one of the things that I lob about teaching public finance, and I don’t know if it’s been your experience as well, is that you’re introducing people — I teach at Fordham Law — and you’re introducing people to a field that they really have never heard of. It’s not an area that, going back to your origami game as a child, public finance lawyer or public servant. It was not really one of the options on that origami piece of paper. And so introducing people to the field and having them understand the interplay between the public and private sectors and how important good communication between them are and how we can be a service to each other and our other citizens is just a really exciting opportunity I find every year that I really enjoy. And I don’t know if that’s been your experience as well.

Megan Kilgore (35:17):
It’s the best gift that I give myself. I will tell you, probably yourself selfishly, you get to not only see great students go on to do great things, but then you get to call them when you have a question or they’re working someplace at a really smart think tank and you need some advice or access to information at the Fed. It’s amazing to see where they’ve all gone. But I would say nine years ago, eight years ago when I first started teaching, and perhaps the same as for you, a lot more of what I found myself teaching then was not overly technocratic, but it was a much more like, these are the roles of an organization and these are the fine tuning kind of skills that you need to have in order to carry out your jobs. And I would say, I actually just did this analysis myself with our hiring here at the city.

(36:08)
We went back to when I first came into office, that would’ve been in 2018 through present, and we word clouded what some of our roles, like if we’re doing a job posting, what are the major words that we’re using? And we really used to use a number of much more detailed skills, very technologically specific. And today there words like creative, agile, curious, those skills. It also leads to what you were started out by talking about today, which is the pandemic and leading through that uncertainty. But right now, when we’re hiring people, I think they don’t always understand that public finance has the power to be able to take a really good idea and make it live or to take a social inequity, and actually you can build a financial model to improve it, if not solve it.

And that when people figure that out, when my students and perhaps you figure that out, they get hooked. That is their moment of a-ha. Where they’re like, now we understand the power and now we understand why you’re doing this. That moment is just, it’s the best feeling. Absolutely. When people understand that public finance ends up touching their daily lives in so many significant ways, right? The water they drink, the roads that they drive on, the schools that they attend, they really take an interest in it beyond it becomes very personal and they really dig in. It’s just wonderful to see year in and year out.

Lynne Funk (37:51):
This back and forth has been just excellent. You both have given such great insights into so many of the challenges, I think that we are all facing professionally, not just in public finance. I think it translates well into other industries. I will say yes, I think it gives me, both of you teaching at university level — that really makes me happy. It makes me feel like I’m going to have a job still in 10 years. The Bond Buyer will still exist.

Megan Kilgore (38:17):
For sure.

Lynne Funk (38:19):
So before we part, is there anything else you just wanted to leave our listeners before we head out?

Megan Kilgore (38:24):
No, I’m grateful. I’m sure Virginia, you are as well, which means a lot to us.

Virginia Wong: Absolutely grateful and humbled and very appreciative.

Lynne Funk (38:34):
Thank you both so much for your time. We really appreciate it. It was a great conversation. We could keep going, I’m sure. Thank you for listening to this Bond Buyer podcast. I produced this episode with audio production by Kellie Malone Yee. Special thanks to Megan Kilgore and Virginia Wong, the Freda Johnson 2023 award winners.

Rate us, review us and subscribe to our content at www.bondbuyer.com/subscribe.

From the Bond Buyer. I’m Lynne Funk. Thanks for listening.