Profiles of Impact is a recurring Reveille feature
spotlighting our Presidio Institute Fellows’ journeys from
inspiration to impact.
NOEL ANDERSON
In his work and his life,
Noel draws strongly on the inspiration of his family members
– past and present. His grandparents set an example by
having dedicated their lives and savings to provide
opportunities to their children. Meanwhile, his father’s
resilience and leadership continues to motivate him, having
been one of the first African Americans to integrate into
the fire department of New York in the late 1960s. His
mother’s resourcefulness and tenacity, raising a family
while receiving post-secondary training at night, inspires
him. Noel reflects that he “grew up seeing examples of a
real commitment to increase access by penetrating the
industries and sectors that were the main vehicles for
building the black middle-class. My family members are a
core reason for the opportunities I was able to have as a
young man.”
Unlike many of his peers growing up, Noel was able to attend
a good school and earn an advanced education. “I was a real
beneficiary of the affirmative action policies in place at
the time,” he notes. “It got me onto a trajectory which
focused on education.” Noel took full advantage of the
opportunity, and became an accomplished scholar. After
excelling during his BA in Political Science at Brooklyn
College, Noel went on to obtain an MA in Education from the
University of Pennsylvania and PhD in Educational
Administration from New York University. “I had come from a
poor-performing high school here in New York, and even
though I’d been able to attend Brooklyn College, I was far
behind when I arrived. It got me thinking not only about
access to education, but also quality of education. So, I
went on to become a teacher.”
After stints in education consulting with non-profits, for
profits and government, and ten years as an Associate
Professor of Political Science at the City University of New
York, Noel took the national-level role at Year Up. The
position is another avenue for him to build upon his prior
knowledge from a new point of view, allowing him to tackle
the challenge of education quality, access, and empowerment.
Working to reduce the opportunity divide felt by urban youth
is not easy, however, and requires significant resilience,
but Noel says that the young people he works with every day
keep him focused and determined. “Given my past, I’ve always
been interested in the social sector’s ability to focus on
access and equity. We need to recognize that people start
from different points. When Year Up participants succeed, I
know that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing on this
earth.” Noel recognizes, however, that addressing complex
challenges like those of Year Up, often depend on cross
sector collaboration.
“When I was growing up, a community-based organization in
Brooklyn provided after-school programs for local residents
in an at-risk neighborhood. They had previously been lent
space in one of the colleges, but when the school decided to
re-purpose the space, the organization had to leave. Its
leader didn’t have the foresight or relationships to find a
solution with another strategic partner, and so it had to
shut down.” Seeing that example play-out first-hand inspired
Noel to learn how he could anticipate and prepare for “blind
spots” – by knowing how to develop shared outcomes and
refine communication channels with partners across sectors.
“The partnership and trust-building frameworks that I’ve
learned through the Presidio Cross Sector Leadership Fellows
program are invaluable for me in my role.”
The Fellows program has also helped Noel develop his own
leadership profile and learn about how he can best leverage
his strengths and motivations in the context of cross sector
interactions. Noel says that now he can evaluate
partnerships that Year Up is working towards by reflecting
on his own role within collaborative partnerships by asking,
“Are we on the same page? And if not, how can I help us get
there together?”
JEWLYA LYNN
Jewlya Lynn was afforded an
immersive first exposure to cross sector collaboration on
the heels of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre and
following a brief stint working in the Colorado Legislature.
“In the year after the shooting, the realization emerged
that the boys who committed the crime had been involved with
probation and juvenile diversion programs, had been seeing
private psychiatrists and therapists, had issues at school,
and were known to the sheriff’s office – but no one knew the
whole story. There was a prevailing belief that if these
public and private service providers had known the extent to
which issues were arising, nobody would have let things get
to the point that they did.”
Jewlya’s role was to bring together the stakeholders who
could figure out how to connect the relevant systems to
prevent a similar tragedy from happening again. “Like many
of our biggest societal challenges, disconnectedness in the
case of supervision and support systems – which, together,
failed the young men in question – is not an easy problem to
fix. Through a broad coalition that included local
government, service delivery providers, community leaders,
family members, private foundations, and more, we worked on
this problem for three years. Without a roadmap to guide our
cross sector effort, however, we spent a lot of time on
planning, and not enough time making actual changes. In the
end, while we didn’t move the needle in the manner we would
have liked, we did create readiness in the community with
more people talking about the importance of working across
sectors to address this type of social challenge. And, some
great things have been accomplished since we set-out,
including the passage of legislation which improved the way
human service delivery is funded and, as a result, how it
operates.”
Reflecting on the experience, Jewlya says she recognizes that
comprehensive plans alone cannot resolve societal problems
like school violence. “We have such extraordinarily complex
problems, and if we don’t get smart about how to solve them,
if we don’t start taking risks and experimenting with new
ways of doing things, we’re not going to make a real
difference.” In response to her experience, Jewlya
co-founded the Spark Policy Institute, a consulting firm
that works across sectors to develop innovative,
research-based approaches to solve complex societal problems
that defy easy solutions. Her team of facilitators,
researchers, lawyers, and evaluators is skilled at working
in communities, has a deep understanding of policy and
politics, and provides extensive expertise in working across
public and private sectors. “I didn’t set out to launch an
organization,” Jewlya reflects, despite now overseeing a
team of 18 as their CEO and Research Director. “When we
first started 10 years ago, we had a vision that there needs
to be a loose federation of people who are doing cross
sector, systems-change work because no one knew how to do
it, and if we didn’t learn from each other, we’d never
figure it out. Within two years, we were overwhelmed with
the challenge of managing the requests that came in, and so
we decided to capture everything we were learning and share
best practices through a consulting model.”
For someone who actively and continually explores methods to
govern, operate, and evaluate cross sector collaborations,
the Presidio Cross Sector Leaders Fellowship has been “a
great learning experience.” As has been similarly-cited by
many of her peer cohort, the opportunity to hear about the
work that’s going on around the country, and learn from
examples of both successes and failures is eye-opening:
“Importantly, while we’ve been exposed to frameworks and
tools, we have also been given space to think about their
application. It’s sometimes mind-blowing how much insight
the fellows have about how we can apply the content, and
that has opened my own thoughts up.”
JIM MURRAY
As the Director of the John
Gardner postgraduate program at Stanford University’s Haas
Center for Public Service, Jim Murray is typically the one
who is administering fellowship programs and helping
students and recent graduates learn about opportunities to
contribute to the public sphere. “It was interesting to flip
the lens and go through the application process myself,” he
recalls. There were many reasons for Jim’s interest in the
Presidio Cross Sector Leadership Fellows program. “I figured
I was just beginning to reach that ‘mid-career’ point, and
so the idea of doing a fellowship – something that would
spark new thoughts and expose me to new approaches of
carrying on my work was incredibly exciting. The idea of
broadening my network and connecting with people from other
sectors and walks of life was also very intriguing.” The
more that Jim learned about the program, and the burgeoning
work of the Presidio Institute more generally, he was
drawn-in.
Jim’s path to the fellowship, however, begun much earlier in
life. “I’ve always been interested in many fields” he says.
“But a common thread has been improving the health of
communities, their surrounding environments, and families
and young people within them.” Growing up in a large
Irish-Catholic family in Ohio, Jim saw his own family
members in public service and contribute significantly to
community efforts. Growing up there was an expectation that
you would help others. As an undergraduate at Boston
College, Jim enrolled in an interdisciplinary program called
Environmental Geosciences – “a mix of hard sciences, but
also policy, sociology, and law” – and then joined the
Jesuit Volunteer Corps. “I worked closely with the juvenile
justice system, making connections between families,
schools, mental health professionals, and the legal system,”
Jim recalls. “I came to understand the investment required
on the part of many different stakeholders when helping
young people get onto and sustain a positive trajectory. It
really opened my eyes to the importance of working across
boundaries and sectors.”
After graduating from law school at the University of Notre
Dame, Jim went to work at the Supreme Court of California.
When the opportunity arose to pursue the Coro Fellows
Program in Public Affairs, he jumped at the chance. “It
really broadened my perspective on how entities can work
together across sectors,” Jim says. He worked with Habitat
for Humanity and found himself able to apply his legal,
environmental, policy experiences towards improving the
lives of families and youth once more. Importantly, that
position also led him to his current role at Stanford
University.
“I realized how much passion I have for leadership
development. I am very motivated by the opportunity to work
with emerging leaders who have the chance to go on and
contribute in their own unique ways to their communities.”
In his role as Program Director of the Haas Center for
Public Service, Jim helps assists Stanford students in
finding public service work through fellowships, networking
events, and career fairs.
Recently, Jim has had an eye towards partnering with
private philanthropic organizations and the business
community to provide increased opportunities for Stanford
students to make a positive impact on the life of Americans.
“We take a broad definition to the term ‘public service,” he
says. “We feel that there’s a lot of overlap between our
mission and the mission of businesses who want to have a
social purpose, and so we have a real chance to partner with
them to open that door to our students.”
Jim finds that the next generation of leaders cares less
about which sector they work in and more about the social
impact they can have. As a graduate of the Cross Sector
Leadership Fellows program, Jim is better equipped to help
his students learn about available opportunities to solve
big problems from within any type of career path they choose
to pursue.