394: Kris Engelstad—Don't Call Her a Philanthropist
The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe
The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe
4.9 • 40.8K Ratings
🗓️ 9 July 2024
⏱️ 87 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As trustee of the Engelstad Foundation, Kris has overseen the endowment of over $300 million in scholarships and grants. Kris talks about working as a maid in her father's hotel on the Las Vegas strip, what she learned from watching him build several Nevada landmarks, and what it's like to manage a billion-dollar foundation.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, it's the way I heard it, specifically episode number 394. |
| 0:08.6 | This one was almost called, for God's sake, flush the toilet. |
| 0:13.9 | Because it was just a terrific observation by Chris Engelstadt, today's guest, who worked as a maid once upon a time for her dad |
| 0:25.3 | in Las Vegas. You said Inglestat? I believe it's Engelstadt, isn't it? Anglestat. Yeah, what I said? |
| 0:31.5 | I thought you said Ingolstadt, which sounded weird to me. That is interesting. Maybe I was thinking |
| 0:35.2 | of Laura Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie. |
| 0:38.3 | Well, I'll tell you what, the last thing I want to do is mispronounce Chris's last name, |
| 0:43.3 | because Chris Engelstad has turned out to not just become a friend, but become a real supporter |
| 0:49.3 | of the MicroWorks Foundation. |
| 0:51.3 | Yeah. |
| 0:52.3 | And from her days when she used to work as a maid in Las Vegas, which, by the way, flush the |
| 0:59.0 | toilet, folks. |
| 1:00.5 | I mean, if you're staying in a hotel room, you know, this is one of the most basic things |
| 1:05.4 | you can do, just flush the toilet so the maid doesn't have to. |
| 1:07.5 | It's not too much to ask. |
| 1:08.0 | The bar is super low. |
| 1:09.5 | Very low. |
| 1:09.9 | Very low. Very low. It doesn't take a lot to make Chris happy. At least it didn't back in those days. Today, |
| 1:15.5 | her standards have evolved a bit. And she is currently in charge of roughly a billion dollars. |
| 1:21.0 | Right. The Engelstad Foundation. Well done. |
| 1:24.8 | Has been incredibly generous, not just with microworks, but with a lot of organizations who |
| 1:31.2 | are doing incredible work in Nevada and North Dakota in particular, but some other places |
... |
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