Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - The Sunflower Network: Growing Hope Amid Conflict with Dustin Ross

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

This week Anthony speaks with Dustin Ross, founder and CEO of the Sunflower Network, about his journey from commercial real estate to humanitarian aid in Ukraine. Dustin shares his motivations for starting the Sunflower Network, the impact of the ongoing war, and the importance of community collaboration. He discusses the resilience of the Ukrainian people, and the need for hope in difficult times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's everything. That's from authors and historians to figures in entertainment, political activists, and, of course, Wall Street. Before we dive in, make sure to follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And don't forget to leave a review. Good or bad, I want to hear from you. I want to hear whether you're enjoying it or where we can improve. And I can take the hits. So let me know. If you don't like something, say it straight. Now let's get into it. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining us on Open Book is Dustin Ross.

He's a founder and CEO of the Sunflower Network. And, you know, Dustin, it's great to have you on. We usually talk about books, but your story and work is so important that I have taken editorial liberty to bring you into Open. book and talk about the sunflower network. Tell us first a little bit about your background and then tell us about the sunflower network and then people will figure out why I brought you on the show. Yeah. Well, it's good to see you, Anthony. Thanks for having me on. The quick background of myself as I was born and raised in New York City, went to the University of Michigan, I was working in commercial real estate for a large global investment development firm. When on February 24th, 2022, I watched the news and horror wondering how something like this could be happening as Russia

commenced its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. I'm not Ukrainian, but I'm a keen student of history and aware of the magnitude of the moment. And something clicked for me. And what clicked is I got to do something to help. And so I packed up a bag full of tourniquets, flew that duffel bag from I was living in LA at the time across the Atlantic Ocean to the Romania-Ukraine border, handed that duffel bag off to someone to bring into the country. And I felt great. The next day I got a video of my bag with my check luggage tags still attached, being unloaded all the way by the front lines in Hotkeave.

And that's when I realized that we really can make a difference. And the way we can make a difference is by connecting the people on the ground who understand how to make an impact and understand their local situation better than anyone with global resources that understand solutions. And so since then, created the Sunflower Network. We delivered over $4.5 million of aid, life-saving medical aid. to Ukrainians in need and then shifted our focus from delivering aid to more scalable and sustainable infrastructure solutions. And so now we're using prefabricated modular technology to deliver

healthcare infrastructure built in the hospital right now in Ukraine. And the vision is to expand this model of work to other areas where there's a need for rapid, sustainable, and high quality reconstruction. When you are talking to people about the Ukrainian war, because there's so much disinformation out there, Dustin. Give me like a 60 to 90-second compelling case for what you're doing and why the cause and the fight is so important. Well, it's a great question, and I'll answer it in two buckets. Why is the case compelling? Why should we do what we're doing? Because right now we're focused on building a children's hospital in Western Ukraine where there are children, just like children anywhere in the world, sitting scared in a doctor's office, but instead of a nice

doctor's office where they get high quality medical treatment, they're sitting in a building that was built over a hundred years ago that is quite literally falling apart with no insulation, no ventilation, and they're scared. We have the opportunity to help children. And there's a lot of people with their hands out asking for money, but what I've noticed is there's a real lack of solutions, and there's a real solution that makes a human impact. So, with a lot of people, my Sunflower Network hat on, I try to stay out of the political fray and just focus on the people. But with a little more of a Dustin hat on, why should people care? It's particularly poignant right now. But we've built, as a country, a rules-based system that has a nerd to our benefit.

And Russia's invasion of Ukraine is the most flagrant assault on that rules-based system that we've taken so for granted and that has made lives in America better. And I think when you look at this as a moment in history, and when history looks back on this, what Ukrainians are asking for from us on a humanitarian level is just equip us. We'll do the work. We'll do all the hard work. Just equip us.

Just get us the stuff we need. And I feel like on a human level, it's incumbent upon us to help where we can. And on a practical level, we have the opportunity to help. And so that's where I land on why this matters in a broader context. Oh, I think it's important. Okay, so tell me about the Sunflower Network and what inspired its founding. This idea, of course. But give me more context into your personal life story.

Yeah. As I mentioned, I was working at a big global investment development firm. and COVID provided a little bit of an opportunity to pause and to think about life and the life that I wanted to live. And when I think about work to me, work is an art form. Work is my opportunity to contribute something to this world.

And when the war in Ukraine broke out, it intersected that opportunity to really contribute in that feeling of work as a vehicle and business as a vehicle for drugs. driving positive change with something else in my personal life. You know, I grew up in New York City. One of my first vivid memories is 9-11. And it was my second day of kindergarten.

My mom picked me up and she said, hey, so what's going on? She said, a building just hit the World Trade Center. Go look. You know, I went to village community school in 10th of Washington. Turned my head and there's a building on fire. And I remember my reaction was one of sitting forward and being like, whoa, something important is happening. And that same feeling of something as important is happening. History is happening in real time is the same thing that happened when COVID broke out. It's like, wait a second,

this is important. It's the same thing that happened when Kabul fell to the Taliban. Wait, history is happening in real time. And in Ukraine, when Russia commenced that invasion, it's history happening in real time. And so for me in my personal life, it was a feeling of like, I see that same feeling of sitting forward, of recognizing something important happening. But instead of sitting back and receiving that passively, why not combine that with the business skills that I've learned, particularly the construction, the project management skills that I've learned to actually drive real systematic change that has meaningful implications in the lives of people and the way we structure communities and rebuild communities going forward.

So what have been some of the most surprising and inspiring? collaborations that have come about as a result of Sunflower's work? I think some of the most amazing collaborations are those in which people contribute in their own unique way. And I'll give you an example of that. I got connected with a man named Fred Clark, who's a managing partner and founding partner at Pelley Clark, which is a leading architecture design firm. They designed the Patronus Towers in Malaysia, the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco. and Fred and his team started talking to us, learning what we're doing, being interested. And from the first conversation we had, fast forwarding until now, Fred Clark has been on the ground in Poland meeting with our modular construction partner and has been using his own resources in order to create new designs that we're able to then implement based on variability in our funding scenarios.

And I say all of that, even though there's a lot of technicality there, because what's inspiring to me is a collaboration where people leverage their own unique talents, their own unique interests, to then drive forward change in a unique way. And so I think about Fred and his team and our other real estate partners. But for an architect to use its architectural skill set to design something that matters that means something is profoundly transformative. And I'll give another example. Early in the days of Sunflower Network, we brought a lot of Ukrainian contemporary art back from Ukraine. and finance the organization by setting up art galleries in New York, L.A. and Aspen,

welcoming people into our doors, presenting them with this cultural expression coming out of this unique moment, and then selling that art as a way to finance our core mission. And what I saw is people from the art world able to use their own creative passions, including the artists in Ukraine, in order to fuel forward something that's outside of their necessary scope. And so what I get really inspired by on a personal level is the idea of empowerment. I think that's one of the cool things about you hosting a podcast. You give people a voice. You empower them to share their story and their message.

And the most surprising and rewarding collaborations for me are those where people are empowered to engage in a way that aligns with their unique interests, their unique skill set, but drives towards a purposeful and intentional aim. I'm impressed with you on so many different levels, but I want to, I want to ask this question about your future. So what do you want to make of all this? Like, what do you want to have happen? Hard-hitting questions, huh? Yeah. Right now we are building our pilot hospital.

We're in the final push to get that one done, proof of concept in Western Ukraine. And my focus is entirely there. We're starting to have some other conversations about what the future of the organization looks like. You know, I have some, what I've learned through this experience is I love business and I love building things. I have some concerns about the nonprofit model as a vehicle for really driving scalable change. And so I don't necessarily see myself staying in that space forever.

But I think one of the great things that I've learned by building a business is you've got to finish the job. You can't take your foot off the gas when you're 90% of the way there. You can't drop the football at the one yard line when you're running across the goal. And so my focus right now is entirely on finishing our capitalization, executing this proof of concept, and then setting the organization up to continue serving and impacting those in need while I likely built something else. Well, we've all had those frustrating checkout moments. Maybe the store only takes cash or the system is running slow and you're waiting.

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You know, we were in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic. forum together. You told me some great stories, Ukrainian patriotism, but also selflessness of different people that you've worked with. Tell us one or two stories here. Yeah. I've learned so much from seeing people in the hardest and most devastating moments of their entire lives. and I think that I'm a big literary nerd and I love reading the classics and there's a line in war and peace

that always sticks with me and it's we love those not based on what they do for us but what we do for them I think there's a big misnomer right like who's doing who's the hot hand who's feeding me right now that's the person that I care about

oh I'm not doing enough for this person they're not going to love me no I think it's the opposite I think we actually are giving people we're giving beings as people. I say all of this is a preamble because when I first started going to Ukraine, I've been eight times now since the start of the war. I would ask people, what's the first thing that went through your head when the bomb started falling at 5 a.m. on February 24th?

And so I remember I was sitting with Sasha, who's a former photographer, a former wedding photographer based in Kiev, who then turned his life upside down, is running a refugee shelter in Western Ukraine. And I said to him, What's the first thing that went through your head? I expected him to say, oh my goodness, I'm going to die. But his answer was, where's my wife?

I need to get her to safety. I asked that same question of my friend Stoss, who's a film director, who's now working as a soldier. What's the first thing that went through your head? I got to get my mom out of the conflict zone. I went to my friend Irina, who lives in Lviv. What's the first thing that went through her head? I've got to get my children to safety. And when you look at that in total, it's, you know, life, life becomes very simple in those high pressure moments.

And in the comfort of our, of our wonderful, beautiful bubble that we have in our daily lives where we, we don't even think about those kinds of catastrophic consequences. It's so easy to just think about yourself. How can I be more happy? What am I going to do? Who's doing what for me? But when you see the pressure of that moment, meet the human. entity of people every single time. The first thing they thought of was how can I do something for someone else? It's really, really well said. Let's go to the people, the culture. Let's go to

the story of resilience of Ukraine. Tell us about that. The people, their culture, and their resilience. Yeah. I think it's interesting because this whole war is kind of about the denial of Ukrainian cultural existence. If Ukraine doesn't exist, it's this is really just a part of Russia. And what you see is

Ukrainians very firmly asserting their own cultural and national identity and tying that national identity to a sense of resilience.

So it's interesting because people ask me like what's the mood in Ukraine? Are people tired of the fighting? And I'm not going to lie to you, people are

But the attitude is not we're tired of fighting. We just want to make peace so we can stop fighting. It's like we're tired of fighting. Is our entire life going to be fighting or is it going to come to an end soon? But there's no thought of surrender or of quit. And I think what's been really interesting is going back to my point, your question about surprising partnerships, the resilience of the Ukrainian people has come in the way

in which all the different people in Ukraine have found different ways to contribute. And so you've got a lot of men who are on the front lines. That's actually why, you know, we're building this hospital using prefabricated modular construction. There's a lot of benefits there. One of which is you can't get construction workers to a site in a lot of Ukraine because able-bodied men are being conscripted to fight on the front lines. But what you see is, while the men are on the front lines, women have been stepping up in a huge way in the humanitarian effort. So you have women, you know, one of our key partners in Ukraine, Katia in Kiev, she is running, you know, she ran an import export business before the war,

and she's now turned that whole import export business on its head to import humanitarian aid and then distribute it throughout Ukraine to people in need. And so I think the resilience has been shown in action. And the action has been shown in all sorts of different ways from grandmas and little children packing boxes that go to the front lines to soldiers who are actually there, to doctors who are back at home making whatever impact they can. Um, yeah, a bit of a long-winded answer, but it's hard to, hard to pack. It's exactly what I'm looking for.

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speak at one of my conferences. The, I guess the feeling I had about him is he's not going to back down no matter what. And I don't want to make this a political question. But, but I guess, but I just want to make it about him whether or not the United States is going to be with him or not with him. What are your thoughts there? It's tough. We're very quickly getting out over my skis, but we can have fun looking into our crystal ball anyway. I think that tough thing to say, I think that there's going to have to be compromised on both sides. And I think that Zelensky is going to quickly come to terms with the fact that he's not going to be able to retake all of the land.

that he lost in the war. He's not going to be able to retake Crimea, unless the U.S. and Europe throws its support behind him in a major, major way. I just don't see that happening. Similarly, Russia's not going to take Kiev. I mean, there's just, there's a range of outcomes. And I think Zelensky is negotiating.

I think he's taking a hard stance because you don't negotiate against yourself. But I think, I think unfortunately he's going to have to, he's going to have to come to terms with some hard realities. What do you think? I mean, you have experience not just with Zelensky, but obviously with men in Washington as well. Yeah. Well, listen, I, you know, it's going to be really, to me, I think he's willing to stay in the fight if he can keep the Europeans on his side, obviously.

I mean, you know, he needs help there. It's interesting, though, let me reframe it from a logistical, more observational. Has it surprised you that it's three years after? the war and that the Russians haven't gained more territory. Has that surprised you? No. It has not surprised me. And that's what I think has been missed in the back and forth with the news. People talk about like winning the war. I mean, Ukraine's a huge country. Ukraine's the largest country in Europe besides Russia from a landmass standpoint. And you know, we're building a hospital in Western Ukraine right now, stable part of the country. It's a proof of concept. We want to make

sure we can do it. But we're a thousand kilometers away from the fighting. And it's grueling artillery warfare where there are little gains being made day by day by day. And I think when you read the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, it's like Russia making gains, making advances. They are still very far away from Kiev, still very far away from much of the country. They're eating away at the Dombas, which is the part they've been focused on since 2014, and they are making gains. But I'm not surprised. I'm really not. Well, I guess the reason I bring it up is that the American media makes it to the American public like it is surprising. Obviously, the Trump administration makes it that way too. But let's look back to Sunflower for a second.

Sunflower today. What are your biggest challenges? Biggest challenge is right now we are $250,000 away from executing. the construction of this hospital that will serve a population of 120,000 people. Okay, so you've broken ground or you have to wait to get the $250,000 before you break ground? So we have agreements in place for modular fabrication work, on-site, site preparation work, and an agreement in place with the local municipality to actually structure and execute the work. We need $250,000 to sign those contracts, at which point all the work will kick into play.

And as long as we're able to sign those contracts by the end of May, the hospital will be operational and serving patients in December of this year. Very cool. Pretty awesome. When I am my podcast, I don't ever listen to any of them, but I have five words that I give out to people. And I ask the author or the presenter to respond to the words. I'm going to say a word. You can come up with a sentence or two. three, you can pick it. But if I say the word war, you think of what?

I think of the most ugly things that humanity has to offer right next to the most beautiful things that humanity has to offer. But it's unpredictable, too, in its nature, right? And it's probably always people that have never experienced war are probably in for the shock of their lifetime when they really get up close to it. Is that fair to say? 100%. 100%. But I think what's been interesting is it's the most devastating thing ever,

but you also see the way that people step up and come together and do things for each other in a way that's so hopeful. And so I think it's a very emotionally paradoxical thing where it's obviously terrible, but it's also really inspiring. Okay, that's a good segue. When I say the word resilience, you think of what?

The most important thing in the world. I think resilience you talk about on the national scale of Ukraine people thought Ukraine full in two days to go back to your earlier question I thought Ukraine would fall in two days as soon as it became clear what was actually happening it was like oh no these guys aren't going anywhere and then I think about myself with running and building a business

like you just get kicked in the teeth you found this more than anyone right I mean you face adversity you have to be resilient the biggest thing you never give up never give up my friend you know I'm a big believer in that I've got a one of my partners of Sunflower Network, his dad, has trademarked the phrase don't quit. It's more. Very, very church. When I, when I say the word hope, you think what?

In short supply. I think we're in a world with a lot of bad things and it's easy to be despairing. I think one of my greatest attributes is being optimistic. You see what's happened economically recently. It's hard to be optimistic. But I think we are in short supply of hope and we need hope. And, you know, I hope that something I tell our team and our partners is, in this crazy slice of history in which we find ourselves right now, what we're doing right now matters and provides hope to people. You know, one of the comments that I've gotten from one of our big supporters is, you know, our team has driven.

by people in their 20s who have walked away from more traditional corporate opportunities to do something both entrepreneurial and impactful. And he likes to say, you guys give me hope for the next generation. I think hope is in short supply, and I'm hoping that we can provide some of that and give people the optimism needed to make tomorrow better than today. About sunflower. I say the word sunflower. It's a complicated one.

When you say sunflower, what I think about is... the incredible people that I've crossed along this journey. I hear Sunflower. I think Sunflower Network. I think about what it's meant for me. And I think about all the people in Ukraine who have taught me about what it means to be human. I think about all the important mentors like yourself who have taught me about how to lead, how to exist in this crazy world, how to evaluate opportunity. I think about all the partners who have come and helped to make this impact possible.

I think about the amazing team behind me, Dean, Emma, Barrett, who have made this possible. just when I hear sunflower, I think of people. To tie a little bit of a bow back to your last one, I think those people give me hope. Okay, the last word, and of course I'm going to give you the last word. I say the word Ukraine. What do you think of when I say the word Ukraine? I think a beautiful, strong people that are going through a really tough time. And I think of people who just want to have kids that go to school.

Surviving sovereign nation? Yes. Okay. I think of surviving sovereign nation with people with a lot of industriousness and a difficult path right now, but not a vassal status to Russia. Well, I really appreciate you joining us here on Open Book. Thanks so much. And I'm looking forward to your travails.

And it's a real delight to have you on. Thanks for having me. A lot of fun. I am Anthony Scarabucci, and that was open book. Thank you so much for listening. If you like what you hear, tell your friends and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. While you're there, please leave us a rating or review. If you want to connect with me or chat more about the discussions, it's at Scaramucci on X or Instagram. I'd love to hear from you. I'll see you back here next week.