On this episode of the Bourbon Friday Show, we had the opportunity to talk to Tishaura O. Jones, Treasurer for the City of St. Louis.

Treasurer’s Office—Upgrading St. Louis to Better Serve Citizens

As a conclusion to the 2019 StartUp Week, the Bourbon Friday Show wanted to talk to changemakers in St. Louis. We had the opportunity to chat with Tishaura O. Jones, the first woman and the first African-American to ever hold the title of Treasurer for the City of St. Louis.

While many people may not know exactly what the Treasurer position entails, besides managing money, Jones has gone above and beyond in order to serve the City.

In addition to being in charge of the City’s banking systems and parking services, Jones has worked on several initiatives to improve economic development and financial literacy within the region.

Since beginning her role, the Treasurer’s office investment strategies have yielded over 25 million dollars for the City of St. Louis.

Further, Jones began the Office of Financial Empowerment (OFE) to help city students, and their families save for higher education costs. To date, over 13,500 students have put nearly $1 million dollars towards that goal.

Besides helping St. Louis innovate within the financial sector, Jones also hopes to see innovation spread to other parts of the City government.

“I’d like to see the City develop a position called the Chief Innovation Officer,” says Jones. “And that person would be liaison to the startup community to see what’s going on in the startup community and also help the city improve its infrastructure as well.”

If you’re interested in learning more about these intitatives you can go to https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/government/departments/treasurer/ for more information.

Bourbon Innovation

As always, the Bourbon Friday team does their best to choose a fitting drink for the occasion.

The bottle this week was Weller Special Reserve. Back before Prohibition, WL Weller Distillery had a salesman named Julian van Winkle Sr. Winkle worked his way up through the distillery and eventually became Treasurer for the entire company. Later on, the WL Weller Distillery merged with the Stitzel Distillery to form the Stitzel Weller Distillery which was able to survive the Prohibition Era. Winkle later became known by the now world famous moniker, Pappy van Winkle.