How Staffing Choices Determine A Company’s Resilience

The best business leaders know that a diverse workforce makes for a strong, sustainable company. If you’re an executive, you probably strive to make sure your workforce covers a broad range of experiences, across gender, race, ability and socioeconomic background. But is your company missing out on the benefits of an age-diverse workforce?
Age is an overlooked diversity category, but it’s a vital one, according to recent AARP research. Because people in the US are living and staying active longer, it means they’re part of the purchasing public for longer and that companies could be leaving millions on the table by not taking advantage of these workers’ experience.
AARP’s findings show that the US missed out on a potential $850 billion in GDP in 2018 because people over 50 who wanted to return to work — or who were working and wanted to change jobs or be promoted — were overlooked. Most of that impact fell on “large, higher-productivity sectors, including finance, trade, and professional services, which rely on the contributions of a highly-engaged labor force.” 
Though the study was completed before the current coronavirus crisis, Dr. Joo Yeoun Suh, Director of Longevity Economy at AARP, projected that even without the economic hardships caused by the pandemic, age discrimination alone was on track to lose the US economy $3.9 trillion by 2050, when Gen X and Millennials join the ranks of the 50+. 
As Lori A. Trawinski, a director in the AARP Public Policy Institute, put it: “By removing the lens of age as a way to view existing or potential employees, you can shift the focus to their abilities, skills, experience and knowledge, where it belongs. You will also expand the talent recruitment pool, which ultimately benefits the organization.”
But not every business is set to miss out on the benefits of age diversity. In the UK, many companies have embraced the idea of an age-diverse workforce. More than 20 years ago, home supply company B&Q — the UK analog of Home Depot — “blazed a trail with its active over-50s recruitment policy,” according to the Guardian
As B&Q people director Fraser Longden told the Guardian in 2013, the initiative immediately proved a wise one. “We trialed a store staffed entirely by [more experienced] colleagues in 1989,” Longden said. “This produced 18% higher profits with six times less staff turnover. “
“One of the benefits of age diversity is that policies and practices that resonate with [experienced] workers are also appreciated by new entries and workers of any age or life-stage — meaningful work, purpose, impact, flexibility, and lifelong learning,” says Ramsey Alwin, Director of Thought Leadership around financial resilience at AARP. 
B&Q saw this in action: Experienced workers often desire more flexible schedules and benefits that reflect experience and tenure, but B&Q found that applying these benefits across its entire workforce, for employees of all ages, helped them retain talent. Along with lower turnover, the company experienced 39% less absenteeism and 58% less shrinkage. 
When the company was shortlisted for a Personnel Today age diversity award, B&Q was touted as able to “[establish] the kind of success achieved in age diversity in other areas; specifically disability and race” and “[develop] a work/life balance strategy.”
Similarly, in a 2018 survey of 1000 employee respondents, AARP found that when companies diversified the age of their employees, all employees benefitted: “Seven in 10 workers say they like working with generations other than their own, and the majority agree that both younger and [experienced] workers bring a set of positive benefits that enhance the workplace environment,” AARP reported.
Seventy-nine percent of the respondents said they appreciated being able to pass on their experience and skills to workers younger than them; 77% of respondents said they valued their more experienced coworkers for the guidance they could give, while 69% said age diversity made the workplace more productive. The survey also found that “mentorship can enhance recipients’ “soft skills” and career-related knowledge in addition to the actual skills that get a job done.”
But there’s also a bottom line imperative: AARP’s recent research discovered that “the [experienced] cohort contributed 40% of U.S. GDP in 2018 — an outsized impact for a group that comprises just 35% of the population.” 
Fifty-plus Americans contribute billions of dollars in spending to the economy.  There’s an economic incentive for business leaders to consider them closely in the development of products, programs, and marketing plans.

Anyone who has been in a brainstorm can tell you: The needs of the specific people in the room are naturally reflected in the development of the product or program. By that logic, if you exclude the 50+ from your staff, you run an increased risk of excluding them from your business considerations, and then from your buying market – because you haven’t created something that’s relevant to their needs.  It presents a blind spot the size of $850 billion in GDP.  
How can business leaders maximize age diversity in the workplace — and unlock their potential contributions of the 50-plus? As with all workplace diversity efforts, the first step is changing attitudes. AARP concluded that it will require “tackling workplace practices that push [experienced] workers out the door before they are ready to retire, shifting perceptions that prevent [those] workers from changing jobs or that pass them over for promotions, and overcoming biases in the hiring process that keep [experienced] workers from re-entering the workplace.”
It’s also important for companies to institute the kind of across-the-board culture that will help them retain more experienced workers. Providing flexible work options helps young parents, but it also makes work more accessible to 50+ employees. Offering on-the-job training to seasoned as well as newer employees will also help create an age diverse workplace. Actively recruiting for the 50+ for roles that align with their expertise in a way that recognizes the value of age within diversity initiatives. 
It’s clear that a diverse workforce – scaling generations, genders, races, and backgrounds, will be  essential to your company remaining competitive and innovative in the global economy.
This article was produced in partnership with AARP. You can learn more here about how AARP is shaping the Future of Work.

Unlocking Opportunities From Your Social Network’s Weak Ties

Distant ties often yield the most significant opportunities. Learn how to make the most of yours.
We’ve all heard this job advice before: When it comes to landing that career-changing position, it’s not what you do or how good you do it that matter — it’s whom you know.
But as the world around us gets smaller, our networks actually become much larger. And since our networks are more expansive than they’ve ever been, there’s never been a better moment for improving our professional — and even our personal — lives. Getting outside of your immediate circle and making connections is vital, not just for job leads, but also to build a vibrant,  successful and supported personal life.
“Close, deep relationships are important in life,” said Ramsey Alwin, Director of Financial Resilience Thought Leadership at AARP.  “But it also helps to have a vast network to tap to navigate the many life transitions we all will continue to experience as we age. Whether you’re moving to a new city, getting a divorce, or changing jobs – knowing a gal that knows a guy that knows a guy who can help you goes a long way in making the new life transition less overwhelming.”
In fact, according to AARP research, the people you barely know — or know only through a degree of separation — can be a game-changing investment.
And the power of weak ties goes beyond job hunts, it’s also valuable for life situations like a change in relationship status, new caregiving responsibilities for the old or young, or simple tasks like finding a good dentist or plumber.
This isn’t an entirely new concept. Way back in 1929, the Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy wrote a short story called “Chain-Links,” in which he speculated that anyone could be linked to anyone else by just a few personal connections — from the lowliest laborer to the most illustrious leader. 
This phenomenon, he concluded, was a modern one: “…Something is going on here, a process of contraction and expansion which is beyond rhythms and waves,” Karinthy wrote. “Something coalesces, shrinks in size, while something else flows outward and grows.”
The idea was given a practical test in 1967, with sociologist Stanley Milgram’s “small world” experiment. Milgram mailed packages to random people in Kansas or Nebraska, asking them to return it to a stranger — a student at Harvard University. The catch was that the package had to travel from hand to to hand. A farmer, for example, handed his package off to a local minister, who had a colleague in Boston, and so on. Most packages passed through between two and ten people before they made it to their targets. 
In both Karinthy’s thought experiment and Milgram’s practical experiment, the links between people depended not on close, personal friendships, but on looser acquaintanceships. This  idea was further established by Mark Granovetter at Johns Hopkins in 1973: weak ties are in some cases the strongest. In his paper “The Power of Weak Ties,” Granovetter argued that “micro-level” social links could be the most fruitful.
Since any two people with strong social ties — spouses, colleagues, close friends — tend to share the same social circles, he wrote, people would be wiser to look to more casual relationships to develop a stronger overall network, which can be relied upon in diverse life situations. This means introducing yourself to new people: the grocery clerk, the crossing guard, your cousin’s college roommate, or a new barber.  As AARP put it in a recent report: “Weak ties have access to information and contacts that you might not have.” 
Weak ties, according to Alwin’s research, are especially important for mid-life, mid-career workers — as well as minorities and immigrants, for whom weak ties can be a bridge to an otherwise hostile job market. But it can also help millennials, who may find themselves in need of networks of support when caring for two generations at once. 
Alwin said she’d noticed examples in her own life: When she recently conducted an inventory of her social connections, she found that she had strong ties among well-established colleagues her age and older, but she had few connections to younger peers. “I talk at the water cooler with the interns, but do I take them out for coffee?” she said. “I realized how quickly you can lose touch with emerging leaders if you’re not intentional about it.” As we age, our social networks spread out horizontally, but at a certain point they begin to contract; it’s important to maintain a broad network to beat loneliness and isolation and “shore up relevance and resilience,” Alwin said.
So how do you use those weak ties to broaden your professional and social network — and find support when you need it most? First, conduct an audit of who you know. Notice patterns: are all your friends of the same age as you, or the same religion? What kind of people are underrepresented among your weak ties — and how could you change that?
Social media can be a good place to start. Resources such as LinkedIn and Facebook can show you who you’re connected to, and who those people are connected to. It’s easy to message someone you know and ask for an introduction to someone you don’t know: “There’s a lot of transferable credibility through these tangential relationships,” Alwin said.
But it’s also important to increase your range of weak ties — across age, race, gender and class and geographic borders. It can be as simple as taking an evening class at the community center in a language you don’t speak, joining a community group, or learning a new sport. Alwin said she broadened her weak ties by becoming a Girl Scout troop leader and getting to know more parents in the neighborhood.
Then consider changing your routine. Remember that everyone you meet, even if you don’t become close, could be a potential bridge to an opportunity. And don’t be afraid to reach out, Alwin says. 
“People want to help and to be helpful,” she said. “And they want others to learn through their experiences.”
This article was produced in partnership with AARP. You can learn more here about how AARP is shaping the Future of Work.

How Creativity Is Helping Americans Manage Unexpected Career Changes

It seemed like the world changed overnight. One moment, people were going about their business; the next, they were going into quarantine, and trying to figure out how to keep working without leaving their homes. Many found themselves entirely rethinking the way we work — and getting creative in the face of change.

There are now virtual versions of previously very in-person professions: In Brooklyn, hairstylist JaBarie Anderson is pivoting from giving people haircuts to coaching people as they give themselves haircuts. Through Zoom, he’s worked with clients all over the world, he told NPR; many other barbers have followed suit.

Other unlikely professions are also making forays into virtuality: Florida plumber Patrick Garner spoke with Slate about his days talking clients through fixing their own toilets. His company prepares sterilized boxes of parts and tools for homeowners to use, then explains how to use them over video chat. For office workers, the shift to working from home has been more seamless — but the changes have prompted many to take stock of their professional goals. In Seattle, Kristin Anthony was able to continue herwork developing academic testing material from home. But being home all day made her start to think about whether she actually liked her job.

“The deeper questions the pandemic awakened in her subconscious made her re-think her career path,” reporter Vanessa Misciagna explained. Anthony realized she wanted to explore software development instead.

Whether the pivot is small or large, quarantine has prompted many Americans to rethink their professional plans, passions and goals. And as many industries feel less stable in reaction to the crisis, more people than ever are looking to re-career.

Even before COVID-19 hit, changing careers was becoming increasingly commonplace, according to AARP. In a national survey conducted before the outbreak, AARP researchers found that 78% of workers were likely to change careers at least once during their lifetime. According to AARP’s Ramsey Alwin and Lona Choi-Allum “Gone are the days of our parents and grandparents, when everyone expected to live a three-stage life: Invest in education, work hard, and then retire. Instead, people of all ages are navigating a nonlinear, multistage life experience.”

Re-careering can mean more than just changing jobs. According to Alwin and Choi-Allum, careers are “lifelong occupations” that “allow an individual to grow professionally and advance within the hierarchy of a company or industry.”

And longer lifespans give workers more time to pursue those higher life goals of growth and advancement. “Greater longevity is changing the way we learn, earn, connect, and live,” Alwin and Choi-Allum wrote. “With longer, healthier lives, many want and need to work longer, and given the changing nature of work, career trajectories are changing as well.”

People change careers for many reasons, AARP found:

    • Ambition: people changed careers to maximize their earnings and status, and to find greater flexibility in their lifestyle.
    • Misfortune: Divorce, illness, layoffs, and workplace conflict often precipitated recareering.
    • Passion: as people age and grow as individuals, they often discover new interests they want to pursue — and those interests become more urgent as people age and “someday” becomes “now or never.”

The second two factors may often build off each other, and covid could intensify this effect: “When something catastrophic like [COVID-19] happens, it’s human nature to take stock of the how fleeting and precious life can be, particularly when you have reached a certain age,” wrote Kerry Hannon, author of What’s Next? Updated: Finding Your Passion and Your Dream Job in Your Forties, Fifties and Beyond.

As the pandemic wears on, those who have already had the experience of breaking into a new industry at midlife or later might now have an advantage in adaptability in a post-covid world: the exigencies of the crisis may reward those who are nimble and quick learners.

“Making a career change in the midst of a global pandemic might seem wild at first,” wrote Fast Company’s Susan Peppercorn. “But many people right now are considering taking a job in a different industry, whether it’s because they’ve been laid off from a job in a struggling industry or because the crisis caused them to reevaluate some major life choices.”

Even those who have re-careered before will face challenges, of course. As unemployment soars, many people will look for new jobs for months despite high qualifications. Others will change careers in ways they’re unhappy about, because they have no other options in their field. For example, a digital recruiter might find themselves taking a job at an Amazon warehouse out of desperation, despite the lower pay, harsh working conditions, and possibly deadly health repercussions.

And it’s also possible that covid might make changing careers easier: because so many businesses are retraining employees en masse, hiring a worker with less experience becomes less costly. And it further normalizes midlife career changes. As many are standing at the precipice of reinvention to adapt to a post-COVID economy, creativity in re-careering will also help us collectively recover.

For pre-pandemic re-careerers, “there was a common spine to the success stories,” Hannon wrote. “No one made a rash move. They made sure they had their financial lives in order. They did their homework and research. They asked why me, why now, why this product or service or job? What can I bring to it that will make a difference and bring meaning to my life? But the seed for the change began in a crisis.”

If workers maintain a growth mindset in the midst of this crisis, they may be able to remain relevant and resilient through changes both wanted and unwanted.

A National Internship Day 2020 Message From Carlos Mark Vera

Editor’s Note: The COVID-19 pandemic showed us that our society’s most essential workers are also our most vulnerable. That includes our interns.
In honor of National Internship Day, NationSwell Council member and “Pay Our Interns”‘ Co-Founder and Executive Director Carlos Mark Vera reminds us that if we want to #BuildItBackBetter, the American workplace can no longer compensate interns with experience — we have to compensate them with pay.
Experience doesn’t pay the bills, and many young people, including people of color and low income people, need to contribute to their household income. As millions of people have lost their jobs, young people have been deeply impacted. From cancelled internships and reduced wages to the evaporation of service industry jobs that many rely on to make ends meet, young people need our help.   
And while workers under 25 only comprise one-fifth of hourly paid workers in the country, they made up almost 50% of those paid the federal minimum wage or less. Currently over 7 million people under 30 are unemployed as a result of the pandemic. Fifteen percent of those between 18 and 24 were already living in poverty as of 2019—and that rate is higher for people of color. 
Many young people don’t qualify for unemployment and weren’t eligible for CARES Act funding, effectively being shut out of Congress’ efforts to support workers and their families. 
We need to take action. That’s why Pay Our Interns launched #SaveInternships, an intern relief fund that has provided over $30k in direct assistance to over 40 individuals, and why we are calling on Congress to include funding in the next stimulus package that will create jobs and provide assistance to young people. 
And, in the long term, leaders in the public, private, and nonprofit sector need to come together to develop to create jobs for young people so that we do not leave a generation behind.
Thursday is National Intern Day, and to celebrate this day we ask you to join us in taking action:  

  1. Sign the letter to Congress asking them to invest in job creation for young people. 
  2. Donate to the Intern Relief Fund so you can support young people directly. 
  3. You can share your support by posting on National Intern Day. Here is a social media toolkit with some sample tweets and graphics you can post to Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook! 

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Carlos Mark Vera is Co-Founder and Executive Director of Pay Our Interns. He is also a NationSwell Council Member. To find out more about the NationSwell Council, visit our hub.

Kicking Off #BuildItBackBetter

During last Friday’s NationSwell Conversation, acclaimed documentarian Ken Burns put this current moment in historical context. He suggested that 2020 — and the confluence of COVID-19, global recession, racial injustice and political turmoil — constitutes one of the four greatest periods of crisis in American history, alongside the Civil War, the Great Depression and World War II.

The toll of each past crisis strikes a raw, familiar chord: loss of human life, anxiety and misery at scale, and immense economic displacement and insecurity. But there is another side to them: each period also gave birth to paradigmatic social and economic transformation and progress, from Emancipation to the New Deal to the domestic and international programs and policies that ushered in the most sustained period of economic growth in global history.

They serve as testimony — rich in precedent, insight and inspiration — that out of rupture and suffering, we can emerge better than we were before.

Before COVID-19, all of the ills and inequities were there in plain sight: our nation’s painfully unfinished work to redress systemic racism and injustice; intense polarization and division; gaping inequality in access to education, health, housing and economic opportunity; a fraying of our most important democratic institutions and norms; and behind all of it, a sense that the forces of selfishness and tribalism were faring too well against the countervailing ethos of  interdependence and a shared commitment to the common good.

And now a pandemic has struck — shaking us from drift  and shining a floodlight on the injustices, the corrosion and on the fragility of what’s holding us together.

That’s our opening.

And that is why we are kicking off #BuilditBackBetter: an initiative that will invite the NationSwell community to come together to surface the solutions and ideas that can help us to emerge from this period of crisis with a more equitable, inclusive, resilient society and planet.

#BuilditBackBetter will kick-off with important, wide-reaching conversations, like our July 22 event on anti-racism with Dr. Ibram X. Kendi and Carmen Rojas, PhD. Those conversations will launch a series of tracks focused on vital issues, including: Economic Opportunity, Sustainability, Data for Good, Education, The Future of Work, Building a Culture of Connection and Belonging — and several more to be announced in the weeks ahead. Within each track, working groups of diverse leaders will reflect, explore, ideate, pressure test and surface powerful (often, cross-sector) solutions. We’ll place gender and racial equity and justice at the very core of this undertaking.

As we go, we’ll publish solutions and ideas for this community and a broader national audience of tens of millions online to bring them into the journey —  and invite them to take action alongside us. We’ll capture some of the most powerful solutions and insights generated by each track and share those findings with all of you, to inform and inspire your leadership, work and citizenship. And, of course, we’ll find areas of collaboration, where together, we can take action and drive change and energy behind the solutions that surface.

Now is our time — as a community of pragmatic problem-solvers, innovators, builders and clear-eyed idealists — to work for the paradigmatic change and progress that the current moment offers and that future generations call on us to deliver.

We are so grateful to our extraordinary partners: AARP, AARP Foundation, Camelback Ventures, Einhorn Family Charitable Trust, Lumina Foundation, The Patrick J McGovern Foundation, Pivotal Ventures, Schultz Family Foundation, Starbucks, Workday — and several to be named later — whose support and expertise is so essential to this initiative.

We are thankful to you all for your leadership and for the opportunity to serve and support you. NationSwell exists for you, and we hope that #BuilditBackBetter will provide you a vehicle to seize this moment of crisis as an opportunity to build the nation we’ve never been, the society we seek and the world that must be.

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Greg Behrman is CEO and Founder of NationSwell.

May 2020: NationSwell in the News

We’re proud that the work we’re doing to build a more resilient future is reaching audiences far and wide through some of our nation’s most prestigious newsrooms and magazines. As a valued member of our audience, we wanted to share with you three instances from our recent coverage.
1. “From Military Service to Civilian Leadership” — The Atlantic
In the Atlantic, reporter James Fallows profiles the work NationSwell has done since our founding, praising our team and our ecosystem of partners and Council members for “trying to be part of an answer for America, and of the resilient capacity of citizens in the absence of national leadership.” Read our profile here.
2. “How NationSwell Is Mobilizing Business and Philanthropy to Help Build It Back Better” — Forbes
In Forbes, columnist Afdhel Aziz caught up with NationSwell CEO and founder Greg Behrman for a deep dive on our #BuildItBackBetter initiative, which is convening purpose-driven leaders across sectors to build a society that’s more diverse, equitable, inclusive and resilient than the one COVID-19 disrupted. “We know that it’s challenging to lift our gaze and to think and plan beyond the immediate moment,” Behrman notes in his interview. “But, history shows us that our biggest crises also open up the aperture for paradigmatic change. So, the time is now. ” Read more about our #BuildItBackBetter initiative in Forbes here, and sign up for more information on how you can get involved here.
3. “Paint and a Paintbrush Are Rebuilding Community for Austin’s Homeless” — The Webbys
NationSwell’s original video, “Paint and a Paintbrush…” , received an honor from the Webbys, an annual award celebrating the best of the internet, in the category of Documentary: Longform. “The work represents the very best of what we’ve done so far in our editorial storytelling efforts,” Anthony Smith, NationSwell V.P. of Published Content + Growth, told the team. “I couldn’t be more proud of how producers Sean Ryon and Hallie Steiner told this story, and how it exemplifies our approach of finding human narratives to tell stories of systemic problems and the people getting to work trying to solve them.” Watch the video here.
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We’re looking forward to sharing more with you on a regular basis.

De-Stressing From Social Media Is Easier Than You Think

If you can feel your stress and anxiety levels rising while you use social media, you’re not alone. And even though your feed is completely digital, those negative feelings can actually have an impact on our physical health. Clenched jaws, tightened fists and elevated heart rates are just a few ways that bad experiences with other people on social media can manifest in our bodies.
But a simple mindfulness exercise like inhaling deeply, listening to music or taking a walk while paying attention to your surroundings can help combat that. At a time when social media use is surging due to the COVID-19 lockdown, it has never been more important to take care of yourself IRL while you spend more time online — and that means learning ways to find your center while you scroll.
Watch three social media users put mindfulness exercises to the test in this video.


This was produced in partnership with the Greater Good Science Center and the Einhorn Family Charitable Trust. Learn more about how you can bridge differences in your life here.

The Opportunity Network’s AiLun Ku on the Importance of ‘Unstoppable Learning’

As President and CEO of The Opportunity Network, AiLun Ku has devoted her professional life to harnessing the inherent talent of every young person of color from historically underrepresented backgrounds, matching their talent with access to resources and helping them thrive in both college and career.
NationSwell spoke to Ku about the road she’s walked along her professional and personal journey, what she and The Opportunity Network have been able to accomplish, and what the future looks like for her and her organization.
This is what she had to say.
NationSwell: Thanks for taking the time, AiLun. When did you first know you wanted to devote your life to purpose-driven work?
The Opportunity Network’s AiLun Ku: We moved to the United States from Taiwan when I was 10, and we moved to a predominately white town in New Jersey. The culture shock was real. It was a hard transition for my family to leave our communities and our families back in Taiwan and to move to a town that seemed… really different. Yes, we had our aunt and uncle there, and my cousin. We didn’t really have a full community like what we had in Taiwan.
When we moved to the United States, we attended your typical small, suburban public school. They hadn’t had to welcome an immigrant family for probably decades before we arrived, and so the teachers weren’t prepared to support us to learn English or to just become a part of the learning community. The teachers would say things like, “Why are you talking to her? She doesn’t speak English.” One time I used the word “yeah” instead of “yes,” and the teacher reminded me, “That’s an American word.” It made me feel like, “Oh, that word is not for me,” essentially.
It was a hard thing to come from a public school in Taiwan where everybody pitched in as a community of learners, and to come into the American public education system being singled out as an outsider who was made to feel like, “You’re not worthy of the learning resources.”
That was a tough thing for us to reckon with. Then, we just persisted because that’s what you do. That’s what you do when you move to a different country. And having experienced both that overt and underlying racism growing up and as an immigrant, I quickly realized I didn’t want anybody else to have to feel that way again, and that I wanted to prevent others from feeling it.
NationSwell: Part of the work that you do is so that people who come from other countries, who speak English as their second language, it’s so that they can move towards sort of thriving from an earlier age, rather than persisting, I imagine.
Ku: Thriving should be the absolute norm of the education system; but it’s often an exception to the rule when somebody thrives in the American education system. Especially if you look at really segregated communities in urban areas, and if you look at historically under-resourced, underserved communities — that continues to be the case. I think it’s the fact that only few people thrive in the American education system from preschool, from early childhood, all the way through post-secondary, is all the evidence we need to see that the system is designed to leave many of us behind.
NationSwell: That’s a perfect segue into my next question, which is, what is the opportunity gap, and how is The Opportunity Network working to close it?
AiLun Ku:I define the opportunity gap as something that was systematically, historically produced in our social context. That means between systematic oppression, systematic racism that has created generations of resource hoarding and gatekeeping that prevents young people of color and first generation students to access the resources that match their ambitions and talents, to thrive. That is the opportunity gap. The opportunity gap exists both in resources as well as in relationships, and in social capital as well as financial capital. That’s what we’re working to address.
The Opportunity Network works to close it from a few different entry points. From a direct service entry point, which is meeting students’ immediate needs. How do we serve young people of color in high school all the way through college graduation, open up access that provides them with awareness of all the college and career opportunities that are available to them, and then secure those resources and support them on their self-directed journeys toward college and career success?
We also change the way people think about what opportunity and access look like from an institutional level as well as the systems level, which is why we also have a capacity building program. We work with other non-profit organizations and schools to reimagine what college and career look like when your young people are the center of decision-making. The Opportunity Network is doing that work across 18 cities in the United States. This year, we’re slated to serve 5,000 students. Those are the ways that we’re working to address the opportunity gap.
NationSwell: What’s a touchstone that shows you that you’re on the right track here, even if there’s still so much to be done?
Ku: One of the things I’m really proud of is building an asset oriented and asset-based space for all of our young people, all of our staff, all of our stakeholder groups. I think it is important that we continue to underscore that every person inherently has something to offer, and every community inherently has something to offer. It’s a belief and a core value that we continue to nourish within the organization and with our partners, and also in the broader social change conversation and narrative. We know that it matters because our students, our young people and our partners enter spaces knowing their value, and are unapologetic for activating their agency because they know that they have value in every space that they enter.
NationSwell: What is the Purpose Library? Why are you launching it?
Ku: I think “purpose” is an evolving thing. It almost feels like a privilege when you have time and resources and the access to live your purpose. That should be a right for every person on the face of this planet to live fully into your purpose, and to lean fully into your purpose. One of the things we believe really firmly at The Opportunity Network is the more you can hear about stories of purpose, the more you can self-reflect, and self-direct, and shape what that purpose means for you, and it doesn’t have to be a privilege.
The idea of purpose, it’s embedded in stories, it’s embedded in storytelling. I think the only way we learn about how people have arrived at their purpose is through storytelling, and so what a better way than to create an entire library of people telling the stories of their journeys from their roots to their purpose, so that young people, as they’re on the road to discovery, their own purpose, they can learn from everybody else’s experience and activate the power of storytelling, and be authors of their own futures.
The Purpose Library will live on OppNet’s brand new open-access platform, UninterruptED: Unstoppable Learning, which we launched in response to COVID-19. The platform will help first-generation college-bound students and young people of color from historically underserved communities to stay the course in their postsecondary and career goals.
About The Opportunity Network 
The Opportunity Network (OppNet) ignites the drive, curiosity, and agency of students from historically and systematically underrepresented communities to connect them to college access and success, internships, career opportunities, and personal and professional networks. We work with 950 students in our direct service OppNet Fellows program for six years—from the summer after 10th grade through to college graduation, and into careers—with remarkable results: 92% of OppNet Fellows graduate college in six years; 93% will be the first in their families to graduate from college; and 89% secure meaningful employment or graduate school admission within six months of college graduation. Additionally, OppNet drives national student impact through Career Fluency® Partnerships, our capacity-building program for schools and youth-serving organizations across the country looking to boost college and career readiness in their young people. To date, OppNet has worked with over 60 Partners to support thousands of young people in 20 cities across the country reimagine college and career success.

Summit West 2020: How Candice Jones Puts Purpose Into Action

Ahead of Summit West 2020, NationSwell is profiling leaders and luminaries from a diverse array of fields to discover how they lead with purpose — and inspire others to do the same.
As president and CEO of the Public Welfare Foundation, Candice Jones strives to do more than just start a conversation about what’s broken about our justice system — she wants us to visualize what a working justice system might actually look like, then get to work towards making that vision a reality.
But in order to take the time necessary to bring about that radical, affirmative change, you can’t also be chasing the spotlight.
NationSwell spoke with Jones about transformative justice, and what staying connected to purpose-driven work means for her — and perhaps more importantly, what it doesn’t.
This is what she had to say.
NationSwell: Tell us a little bit about the work you do at Public Welfare Foundation. 
Candice Jones: Public Welfare is a national foundation that does grant making primarily in youth and adult criminal justice. The organization has existed for over 70 years now, but in the last few years, we’ve narrowed our focus to really looking at this idea of transformative justice. Can we get to the place in America where we push past thinking about criminal justice reform as an antithetical statement, in terms of what we don’t want to see? What if we actually start to envision, as a nation, what justice really means to us — what we would like to see in the affirmative in the communities that are hardest hit by crime and violence?
And that means transformative justice. We’re really trying to build all of our efforts around seeding a vision for that in the future for this country. We think it’s critically important.
NationSwell: Can you tell us about a time in your professional or personal life that you made a difference by putting purpose into action?
CJ: I was a White House fellow years ago in 2012 and 2013. It’s an old fellowship program that’s all about developing leaderships from multiple sectors and all over the country. They bring you together in Washington. They place you in a job, and they allow you to lead on a public sector issue.
And I was pretty excited. I was an attorney by training. I had done a lot of youth and criminal justice work up until that point. It was pretty sure I would end up in a placement at the Department of Justice, where I thought I was uniquely qualified to bring value at the time. And I ended up instead in a placement at the Department of Education, which was not originally what I had envisioned for myself, or what I thought was a natural fit.

“When you look at people who you really believe are doing the work, they don’t have time to tweet about it at the end of the day.” — Candice B. Jones

And I really had to make a choice about whether or not I was going to be frustrated about how things had shifted, or if I was really going to focus on the potential good that could be done. And what I really thought about is, while there were tons of people who were willing to think about the youth and adult criminal justice system at the Department of Justice, interestingly enough, there weren’t a lot of those people at the Department of Education because so many of those folks there felt like that wasn’t their core issue — they were there to think about education and education systems.
So it gave me a unique opportunity to have a good discussion in the Department of Education about how their choices could lock people out in the youth and adult criminal justice systems. And so I really used that time to start to focus that conversation, work with partners there and grow support for what ultimately became a plan to reinstate access to Pell for youth in juvenile justice facilities across the country; and on the adult side, what was the creation of experimental grants to test whether or not we should be reinstating Pell on the adult side, which became a larger project around Second Chance Pell.
It was a good learning lesson for me early on in my career. I come back to that story a lot because it would’ve been very easy to just be like, “Oh, I should be where a lot of other people just like me are probably greatest,” and it turns out the best use for me was to be in a place where actually everybody didn’t think like me. Because then I could actually engage in some real discussions.
NationSwell: What advice do you have for others on how they can better act with a clear sense of purpose?
CJ: I think the thing that we all struggle with as humans is that we have to divorce our personal interests from our potential purpose. Can you prioritize the thing that you purport to be doing in this world over whatever it’s going to mean for you personally?
I think we’re seeing a lot of that in the way people approach the civic sector and public service leadership. I would always say public service should feel more service than public. It’s not about celebrity. It’s not about the spotlight. When you’re doing it right, when you’re doing it with a lot of intent and humility, it usually feels more like a slog.
Maybe you aren’t the first one in line to get the magazine interview or coverage of yourself personally, but if you’re focused on the purpose that inspires you to serve, your ability to impact the substance of the work and to get other people to trust and partner with you becomes much greater. If you could just suppress some of the other things that are maybe driving and motivating you and really make sure that it’s about the purpose, I think that’s a game changer for people who are driven by a social sector mission.
When you look at people who you really believe are doing the work, they don’t have time to tweet about it at the end of the day. They’re doing the work, not for fanfare, not for visibility. They’re doing the work because they care about the work. I meet a lot of young people all the time, and they want to have these incredible careers. They want to be the next Bryan Stevenson. Bryan Stevenson wasn’t what he is now at 28. Like there were decades of dedicated service and a ton of humility that went into the shaping of the moment that he’s having now. Not enough people acknowledge that.


At a time of extreme tension and uncertainty, people are losing confidence in traditional institutions’ ability to solve bigger problems facing our communities and environment. To fill the vid, leaders and organizations are expected to make a commitment to a purpose that benefits all stakeholders.
NationSwell’s Summit West will bring together a diverse group of impactful leaders and organizations. Together, we will learn from the people practicing purpose every day.
Candice Jones is a member of the NationSwell Council. To find out more about the NationSwell Council, visit our digital hub. And to learn more about Summit West 2020, visit our event splash page