Joshua McArthur, MA ’22, loves coffee and ministry, and when he wanted to re-focus his career from accounting to organizational leadership and culture, he checked out several programs at big universities. He chose Concordia’s Townsend Institute because of its faith element.
“I grew up [in the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod], and faith affects how I think and operate,” he says. “I wanted to find a program to have the freedom and flexibility to include that aspect of my thinking. If you want to be integrated in that way, you have to acknowledge faith. That was a critical piece.”
Skeptical initially of the online format, McArthur, the director of culture at High Brew Coffee in Austin, Texas, a beverage brand that makes and distributes cold coffees internationally, says he was surprised by the results.
“It worked great for me,” he says. “The cadence of meeting, the cohort, the classes. Being able to interact with people and faculty, then focusing on doing the readings and reflecting on things. The personal growth that came out of it was huge.”
At High Brew, he has added responsibilities and grown with the startup brand. His manager empowered him to experiment with employee engagement software and gather data to provide feedback to managers about how employees felt on the people side of the business. Recently, he has coached managers and members of the executive team through challenges that arise within companies, helping them get concrete results and meet their goals.
“I have an ability to develop relationships to enable people to get the perspective they need,” he says. “It’s been really cool, and I’ve gotten good feedback from people I’ve coached and worked with. It’s been really satisfying.”
Coffee connects people in a low-stress, approachable way. It’s a great way to start conversation.
High Brew makes ready-to-drink coffee drinks, mostly in 8-oz. cans, for people on the go. The line includes Mexican vanilla, double espresso, nitro sweet cream and black and bold, among other flavors.
“This space is super-competitive,” McArthur says. “It’s a difficult landscape in which to compete. We’re trying to innovate and come up with new products and do what we currently do really well.”
During the forced shutdowns of businesses in 2020-21, High Brew’s staff went entirely remote and has remained so, which has ramifications for the preservation of company culture.
“You do miss out on some of the culture, which has been a challenge,” McArthur says. “Everybody in our company has a lot of autonomy and knows what to do in their jobs to be successful, so alignment is a big piece. It means working well with each other across departments and communicating what’s going on.”
What he learned through the Townsend Institute’s online program is bolstering results at the company, he says—especially role-playing through difficult scenarios. “I didn’t think I would like role plays, but I love them,” he says. “Say you’re going into a hard conversation, and you’re nervous about it. Beforehand, you practice and mock the situation through Zoom and see how you look. You record it and watch it. It’s a super-helpful tool—painful at the beginning, but if you’re focused on growth, it’s great.”
The other highlight: relationships. “The cohort and the people were great,” he says. As for High Brew’s products, McArthur is a coffee-lover and “a big fan of our product.”
Now wearing two hats—accountant and in-house coach—he especially enjoys seeing how improvements in company culture affect the revenue side.
“It’s been incredibly valuable to see both things,” he says. “I look at our financials and see how our business is doing from a hard, factual state, and in more of a subjective space with people and how these relationships are going.”
McArthur leads the young adult ministry at St. Paul Lutheran in Austin, TX, whose pastor, Bryan Wolfmueller, received an honorary doctorate in theology from CUI in May. McArthur says he is “using a lot of what I’ve been learning to support that” ministry as well.