Category: Uncategorized

Helping Veterans Takes a Village

Posted on by NationSwell Team

When service members separate or retire from the military, more than 45,000 nonprofits, thousands of public agencies, and countless other organizations and individuals aim to support their transitions back to civilian life. This series explores how communities across the country are collaborating across public, private, business and social sectors to better connect the systems that serve veterans by leveraging the principles of “collective impact.” The subjects featured are all members of National Veterans Intermediary (NVI) Local Partner collaboratives. 
For many veterans, reintegrating into their communities after military service is challenging. Feelings of uncertainty can lead to isolation, and as many as one-third of veterans struggle with depression. It can be hard to reach out when help is needed.
“[Veterans] might not know where to start to get help,” said Carlis Miller, a veteran of the US Marine Corps, who knows firsthand the difficulty of asking for support.
Four years ago, Miller was in the middle of a painful divorce and had just finished grueling treatment for cancer. Not until the Houston native began volunteering for community service projects through the Mission Continues, a national nonprofit that encourages veterans to find new missions at home, did things begin to look up. 
His newfound drive to serve others “turned my life around,” said Miller, who was inspired to become a community leader for TMC. “My passion is to help others and let them know about this veteran community that now means so much to me.”

U.S. Marine Corps veteran Carlis Miller works to support other Houston-based veterans.

Today, Miller also serves on the board of National Veterans Intermediary’s “Local Partner” collaborative, Combined Arms, which connects Houston-area veterans with community-building activities and resources. He has also trained as a community leader through Leadership Houston.
His participation in several veteran-focused groups exemplifies the way these organizations work toward a common goal by sharing resources with each other along the way. It’s an approach known as “collective impact,” a commitment among a diverse network of organizations to collaborate in order to solve social problems.  
Collective impact means that organizations don’t have to compete to help veterans. Instead, “each organization does what it does best,” said Miller. “It’s not about all being the same. It’s about using our strengths to the best of our abilities.”
Working alone, an organization is inherently limited in its ability to help veterans overcome barriers when transitioning back to civilian life. But when a nonprofit partners with like-minded groups, said Miller, “we have endless options for support.”
“It’s really all about co-creating the future that we want to see and how we do that together,” said Jennifer Splansky Juster, executive director of the Collective Impact Forum, an initiative that supports the efforts of those who use this approach.
To successfully reach their goals requires “building relationships, trust and communication across the different partners,” Juster added.
Engaging community members, like Miller, who are deeply affected by the issues they’re trying to resolve is crucial — not only because their perspectives are important, but because they can help facilitate action, lead grassroots outreach and help sustain long-term change.  
And the more everyone works together, “the better we understand each other and how we can help each other out,” he added.

This article was produced in partnership with National Veterans Intermediary, an initiative of the Bob Woodruff Foundation. NVI increases the collaborative capacity of local communities to steward a national ecosystem, in order to achieve optimal well-being for veterans and their families. Sign up for alerts about NVI’s free webinars and tools to support community-based collaboration here.

Leading With Purpose: Insights from AiLun Ku, Opportunity Network President and CEO

Posted on by NationSwell Team

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.
For 15 years, the Opportunity Network has empowered students from historically underrepresented communities by providing them with the support needed to succeed in college and thrive in evolving workplaces. NationSwell spoke with Opportunity Network President and CEO AiLun Ku, a Council member, about how she’s been able to lead by putting purpose into action throughout her entire life.
NationSwell: Thanks for speaking with us, AiLun. How does your current role position you to lead with purpose?
AK: As the president and CEO of  the Opportunity Network, I have the privilege to lead with purpose every day. As an immigrant to the United States from Taiwan at a young age, it was quite tough navigating the American education system and finding a place of belonging. And in my self-discovery journey, I learned that I am good at building and growing community-driven organizations, and given my lived experience, I care deeply about work that sits at the intersection of social justice and education, which OppNet provides me the opportunity to do. My vision is that not only will first-generation students and young people of color influence the future of work and learning, but we will be represented at every level and in every space leading those conversations. And that’s pretty much sums up my job description and the work we do at OppNet!
NS: Can you tell us about a specific time in your professional or personal life that you made a difference by putting purpose into action?
AK: In high school, I worked as an interpreter for a social worker whose job was to check in on the sponsoring families of individuals coming to the United States seeking asylum. Mandarin is my native language, so at 16, I was responsible for giving voice and information to Chinese children and families that have gone through unimaginable hardship in their pursuit of safety.
This job was an early and formative contradiction to how I was treated in the school system. My family and I moved from Taiwan to New Jersey when I was 10. We all had to learn English. In school, with Mandarin as my first language and English as my second language, my first language was deemed a deficit in the American education system instead of an asset.
So, being an interpreter at a young age really helped me transform a part of my identity into purposeful action.
NS: What advice do you have for others on how they can better act with a clear sense of purpose?
AK: While I think striving for clarity is important, I also think doing purposeful work with a little bit of fuzziness around your own vision is okay, too, because self-discovery takes time.
I think self-discovery is such an important practice that takes time, patience, mistakes, generosity and a lot of grace to perpetually make happen. I believe that self-discovery builds the foundation for one to identify and hone strengths and skills that can then be applied to something that gives those strengths and skills meaning — which, to me, is purpose.
One way to consider striving for more clarity in one’s own journey of self-discovery is the practice of inquiry. I am a big fan of asking questions and charging myself to finding the answers. For everything you do or want to do, ask questions, investigate, take action and harness those insights found; check in with yourself, and then do it again.
The next time, though, ask tougher and more complex questions, investigate broader and deeper, take bolder actions based on you insights and challenge yourself to act with more clarity, even if it means stepping back from something.
NS: Who are others leaders or luminaries who inspire you to act and lead with purpose, and why?
AK: There are so many! Alaa Murabit, a medical doctor, Canadian Meritorious Service Cross recipient, one of 17 Global Sustainable Development Goal Advocates appointed by the UN Secretary General and a UN High-Level Commissioner on Health Employment & Economic Growth. She is someone who lives her purpose and speaks truth to power thoroughly and deliberately. She is one of the most steadfast advocates for women and children’s rights and security at the global scale. I learn from her every time I listen to her or talk to her.
Amanda Nguyen, Founder and CEO of Rise, an organization that “organizes and empowers citizens to pen their own rights into existence.” She was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for her work in organizing to pass numerous state-level Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights and also the United Nation’s Universal Survivors’ Bill of Rights. She is one of the kindest, most fashionable, smartest and fun people I’ve had the chance to meet. She is someone who personifies leading with purpose.
Ai-jen Poo, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Domestic Workers Alliance. I learned about Ai-jen when I was very early in discovering the alignment between my strengths and purpose. It has been enlightening to watch her organize, stay true to her values and partner with incredible social justice activists who also lead with purpose, like Alicia Garza, Co-Founder of Black Lives Matter and Principal of the Black Futures Lab, and Cecile Richards, former president, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund to co-found Supermajority, “a new home for women’s activism, training and mobilizing a multiracial, intergenerational community that will fight for gender equity together.” She is always about the collective “us.”
I think it is important to note that there are also leaders across our organizations that lead with purpose at every level. We not only should look outside of our organization for examples of leadership, but also from within and deep inside our own communities and spaces.

AiLun Ku 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. 

The New Orleans Cafe Feeding Souls With More Than Food

Posted on by NationSwell Team

Katherine Hutton always believed food expressed love, but never imagined her cooking would draw her New Orleans neighborhood together.
What started as a way for her to make ends meet, Open Hands Cafe is now a source of inspiration and love for all those who walk in its doors. Serving up more than just delicious comfort food, Katherine uses her tiny cafe to introduce young people to entrepreneurship and create a caring space for those who need it.
While her journey through homelessness, hurricanes and hardship has been bittersweet, Katherine takes pride in knowing that everyone feels “loved on” at Open Hands Cafe.

This article was created by Weave: The Social Fabric Project of the Aspen Institute. Weave supports people who live in a way that puts relationships and community first. These “Weavers” lead with love and defy a culture of hyper-individualism that has left Americans feeling more lonely, distrustful and divided than ever. See their stories and learn more here.

Celebrating NSC Impact: Inspiring Change at a Titan of the Tech Industry

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NationSwell is kicking off 2020 with a series that looks back on our biggest moments of impact from 2019. In our fifth installment, we’re delighted to celebrate how NationSwell supported Microsoft in their journey to develop better tools and services for social impact organizations and beyond.
NationSwell: We were delighted to parter with the Microsoft Envisioning team last year. Can you tell our audience about the work your team does within Microsoft? 
Microsoft’s Harald Becker and Ming-Li Chai: We work on this unique team that looks three to five years out, that uses research to try and reimagine how people will get things done in the future. We like to go out in the field, find interesting organizations and people and try to learn from them. Our research last year was focused on the future of work and how organizations are evolving in the future. Our thesis was that organizations are going to be more networked, working in ecosystems and platforms, and we had the idea to talk to social impact organizations because they have a unique environment and they’ve worked with a lot of different partners in complex environments. They’re trying to solve big, complex challenges and they’re very mission-driven.
NS: So interesting. And how did working with NationSwell support that mission? 
M: It started with a co-hosted conversation on the power of networks. That was a fantastic experience and our first exposure to the kind of the magic NationSwell can create. There were amazing NationSwell Council (NSC) members at that dinner. We then shaped a plan to work together on a research project alongside the Studio team. It was a joint learning journey to better understand how social impact organizations thrive, with a thesis that we can learn from their tactics and strategies and apply those to other domains. Ultimately, as a technology company, Microsoft could then think about developing better tools and services to support those organizations in the future.
NS: Share a bit about the journey of the research project. 
M: The project had three main components. For the first component, the Studio team organized interviews with 30 NSC members. It was a diverse representation of executive directors across different domains and industries as well as different sizes and social impact organizations. We conducted those interviews over the course of two or three months and there were a lot of amazing conversations. We also had a chance to come out to New York and bring a camera crew and we did some of those conversations on video, so we ended up with rich visual data that was awesome. Our team also spent a day and a half working with the Studio team at the NationSwell offices, both to understand some of the patterns we could detect from the interviews and to distill them into a clear set of key criteria that ultimately were the inputs for our final report. We were actually able to visit some of these amazing organizations.
There were two more things we did together that were very important to us. First, you created two video cases studies for us. [The videos] were very touching and you should see them — they’re really great. And the final piece was the salon you created and produced. We brought a whole bunch of Microsoft executives and stakeholders to the event and mixed them with NSC members. We had a half-day experience together where we unpacked some of our findings and we did some interactive table discussions. Our colleagues actually got a taste for what it means to operate in a social impact organization. It was a lot of fun and we got great feedback.
NS: What did this partnership and project mean for Microsoft? How did NationSwell ultimately impact your work? 
M: It enriched our understanding and made us smarter about the dynamics that are important to make social impact organizations successful. We also got a sense for what some of the key challenges are. The project with NationSwell really helped us get a better, more nuanced understanding of those dynamics. There’s a lot of very superficial, high-level talk about what the future of work will look like and I think now we can actually bring a much more nuanced conversation to the forefront.
NS: Were there any internal perception shifts that took place as a result of our partnership and if so, can you describe them?
M: One of the key learnings was really the importance of purpose and mission in social impact organization’s work. We had an inkling about that before, but now we have a much clearer understanding. Yesterday’s announcement at Microsoft was all about purpose, mission and sustainability. So many employees were so excited about our articulation of purpose and mission and accountability and responsibility, and the work we did together really clarified that for us and made it a lot more tangible.
The exercises we did at the salon and visiting the social impact organizations… it touched people. We walked in with our heads and we walked away feeling in our hearts that people are devoting their energy towards something really bigger than themselves. We now talk a lot more about impact at Microsoft. Like “what’s your impact? What are you going to do?” It’s very closely aligned to the industry and the technology jobs and roles that we have. You can touch people’s lives in very profound ways. And there’s so many organizations focused on that and in tremendous ways. For some people, it was a bit of an awakening and that was very powerful and emotional for them as well.
We were super impressed with your team. Everybody at every level of the effort really brought the energy, brought the expertise and always had smile on their faces. We could feel that you care about your work and that was very stimulating for us. It was really a true partnership. It wasn’t like there’s a big firm hiring a vendor. I never really felt that dynamic at all and that was really great. You were challenging us and we learned a ton in the project.
NationSwell is always trying to learn more about how we’ve supported our Council members (and partners!) in their efforts to make the world a better place. If we helped you, we’d love to hear more about it. Let us know.

Celebrating NSC Impact: Tuesday’s Children Secures Influential Financing for Gold Star Families

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NationSwell is kicking off 2020 with a series that looks back on our biggest moments of impact from 2019. In our fourth installment, we’re delighted to celebrate a Bob Woodruff Foundation grant that supports Tuesday’s Children.
NationSwell: Thanks for taking the time to speak, Terry. Tell us about the mission of Tuesday’s Children.
Tuesday’s Children’s Terry Sears: Tuesday’s Children began after the events of Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, where there were 3,051 children who lost a parent on that day. It was started as an organization to provide long term support for those children through mentoring programs, college and career guidance, and leadership programs, as well as programs for the surviving spouses. And in 2011, after the 10-year anniversary of September 11th, we broadened our mission to include the military families, the fallen, the gold star families, and have really been reaching out across the country. Our long-term healing model provides mentors (whether they’re career mentors or youth mentors) and leadership programs which adds value to the grief and the scholarship services that are currently available to the gold-star community. We are really pioneers for broad-based resilience focus tools for that community.
NS: Such an important cause. How has NationSwell been able to support you and your mission?
TS: I joined NationSwell to take part in the veterans roundtable series a few years back, where we heard anecdotally that less than 1% of all veterans’ organization served gold star families. The fact that there weren’t others doing this work reaffirmed our mission. We ended up receiving a sizable grant from the Bob Woodruff Foundation after meeting them through the NationSwell series. So much of organizational collaborations is between people and not so much organizations, as you hear a lot. From getting to know Marshall and Anne Marie (from the BWF) we’ve had opportunities to get the word out about the work we’ve done. Having some personal relationships that we made through NationSwell was great.
And the other thing is that, a couple of years ago, we started traveling to places like Silicon Valley, San Francisco, North Carolina any beyond where NationSwell had members, and I was able to set up meetings in each city. I met Mary Beth Bruggeman, president of the Mission Continues, who was able to connect us with veterans interested in continuing to serve in a different way — by being paired with a gold star child for four to six hours a month over the longterm. These were really important relationships for our organization. When I went to [the West Coast] we were able to get introductions with some of the big tech companies. And, as luck would have it, there was a NationSwell event when I was out there.
It was just really great to be able to walk into a new city and have 40 people right there, where you can say, “Hey, I’m an NSC member too,” and exchange cards and follow up in that way. That was great.
NationSwell is always trying to learn more about how we’ve supported our Council members in their efforts to make the world a better place. If we helped you, we’d love to hear more about it. Let us know.

Celebrating NSC Impact: NSC Members Bring Critical Expertise to Supporting New Parents in San Francisco

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NationSwell is kicking off 2020 with a series that looks back on our biggest moments of impact from 2019. In our third installment, we’re delighted to celebrate four NSC members joining the board of the Children’s Council of San Francisco. 

In July 2019, Anna Nordberg Thompson became board chair of the Children’s Council of San Francisco, where she was tasked with growing the board during a pivotal time for the organization. Below, she shares how being a part of the NationSwell Council helped her support her 2019 goals.

NationSwell: Tell us about why you joined the Children’s Council of San Francisco. Why is its mission so critical?

Anna Nordberg Thompson: Both of our kids were born premature and we were lucky enough to have resources and live in an area where we could access excellent medical care, excellent childcare and a wonderful preschool for both of our kids, who are now five and seven and these robust little nuggets. Going through that experience, I saw both the power of early intervention and I felt the agony of what would it be like to be in a position where you didn’t have access to that kind of care. That really brought home for the importance of early education — those early years are essential for neurologic and social development. But for most parents in this country, finding support during those years is private problem, and its creating a real readiness gap that persists through K-12.

I’m passionate about kids, about childcare — and I really don’t think we can fix our K-12 education system without investing heavily in early childhood.What the Children’s Council does is help families find and afford quality childcare in San Francisco. We connect families with the childcare that fits their needs through intensive counseling and resource and referral.

NS: How has being a part of the NSC helped you in this mission?

ANT: I met with my community manager and shared that one of my big priorities as new board chair to build the board. He let me know that the NSC was launching a new project, to try and connect members who were interested in board service with members who were serving on boards and looking to recruit new members. He ended up connecting me with probably 15 people that resulted in 11 conversations and we now have four new board members. If you’re familiar with onboarding new board members to nonprofits, and it’s a big process and it’s a big time commitment and a lot of people go through it and decide, “I love what this organization does but I can’t commit to this right now.”

So, to find four new board members from one network or organization is pretty extraordinary. And the four we have really come from a range of industry backgrounds. Chris Thomas is head of nonprofit engagement at SalesForce. Victoria Fram is a female cofounder of a VC (VilCap Investments), Omar Butler is the CEO of a nonprofit, New Door Ventures, one George Israel is in private wealth management at UBS and his wife is a developmental pediatrician (so he’s very connected to the issue through that).

NS: We’re so thrilled for you! What a great group. What does the future hold for the board and for the CCSF, and what are you hoping to celebrate as a result of this board growth?

ANT: We have a new CEO, we’re starting a strategic planning process and a it’s pivotal time for early childhood in the Bay area and nationwide. California governor Gavin Newsom has signaled how important childcare is to him. And it’s an exciting time: paid parental leave is finally gaining steam — it’s about the only bipartisan issue there is on Capitol Hill right now. So these issues at least are getting more awareness even though there’s so much more that needs to be done.

And we’ve already seen real strategic planning in our board meetings. I’m already seeing those new points of view help shape the discussion in powerful ways. Victoria, as a female co-founder, has a lot of understanding of how hard it is for women in the business world who are trying to manage childcare and their careers and those challenges. Chris at Salesforce has a really strong sense of how different platforms might support our work. So my hope is that with these new board members, we can really continue to raise our profile and connect with people in San Francisco who understand that childcare is a equity issue and a social justice issue, in addition to an incredibly spicy issue for every family dealing with it, regardless of income.

Childcare is a challenge for every family, every parent I know — it’s something they’re always working on or trying to solve a problem in or they’re so happy in a situation they’re in and just hoping that it lasts. I think that our NationSwell members can bring is new networks and new people who are ready to care about this issue and need to just be informed about it. With their perspective on what our core focus areas of our strategic plan should be and how we’re going to achieve them.

NationSwell is always trying to learn more about how we’ve supported our Council members in their efforts to make the world a better place. If we helped you, we’d love to hear more about it. Let us know.

Celebrating NSC Impact: NYU Business Program Created for Survivors of Sex Trafficking

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NationSwell is kicking off 2020 with a series that looks back on our biggest moments of impact from 2019. In our second installment, we’re delighted to celebrate a first-of-its-kind project that empowered an at-risk population right here in our city. 
After attending a NationSwell Council (NSC) Strategic Advisory Group in 2017, NSC member Joe Esposito (managing director at Jennison Associates) became deeply involved with Restore NYC, an organization seeking to end sex trafficking in New York and restore the well-being and independence of foreign-national survivors. Below, Joe shares how the NSC community supported Restore in creating what might be the nation’s first entrepreneurship program tailored for survivors of sex trafficking.
NationSwell: Thanks for taking the time to speak, Joe. We know a little bit about how Restore helps women who have survived human trafficking find financial independence. Could you share the origins of the innovative solutions you all have piloted?
Joe Esposito: Restore is an extremely mission-driven with a very healthy culture and an extraordinary impact relative to the resources that go into that organization. At the end of 2016, and I went to their executive director with an idea for an online jobs platform to reduce the friction involved with their clients finding jobs. At that time, I also learned about an organization in London that was running a successful entrepreneurship program for survivors that we wanted to replicate here. We knew it would have massive transformational potential. We saw a lot of synergy between these two programs and we wanted to bring it to New York City – a place with financial resources and immense human capital.
NS: How did the NationSwell Council help support this innovative program?
JE: The NationSwell Council had a critical role here.  I first turned to my community manager who helped me connect with fellow NSC members in educational institutions, [including Gabe Brodbar, the then executive director of the social entrepreneurship program at NYU.]  We connected and quickly realized we could host this program out of NYU. Had it not been for my community manager’s efforts and connections, this program quite literally would have never happened.
Furthermore, part of the program includes connecting the women with mentors, and we have a very specific set of criteria for these mentors, given the sensitive nature of the program. I again reached out to my community manager, and she connected me with more folks in the community. Several NSC members ended up being mentors.
NS: Incredibly powerful. What’s next?!
JE: We completed the first two-week program and supported 28 women who came from 20 countries. It was a massive success. We’re planning to measure success of the program by tracking outcomes at the 6-month mark, 12-month mark, etc. We’re also planning the second cohort for 2020. I don’t say this lightly, but I believe we are in the early innings of revolutionizing economic empowerment for this population. And then I expect we can move on to at least one other population of at-risk people in the U.S. I see a long, steady upward trajectory for NationSwell to be at ground zero of this change that has the potential to impact hundreds if not thousands of women over the next decade. And I think it’s a very unique opportunity for people to invest time and energy into. I hope NationSwell continues to be a partner because your organization has so much in terms of capabilities, so much in terms of its diverse, rich community. I think NationSwell can play a unique role here.
NationSwell is always trying to learn more about how we’ve supported our Council members in their efforts to make the world a better place. If we helped you, we’d love to hear more about it. Let us know.

A Letter From the Editor

Posted on by NationSwell Team

To our loyal readers and viewers:
Thank you for choosing to spend another year with NationSwell. We’ve arrived together in 2020 at a time when so many Americans feel we must build the groundwork for a better, brighter future for the collective whole. But before it became shorthand for a referendum on the state of our nation, 2020 was a number associated with clarity of vision — and, of course, the type of clarity that only comes from hindsight.
But what if we could be as clear-eyed about the road ahead of us as we’ve been about the road we walked to get here?
I arrived at that clarity completely by accident: Someone I love asked me to pick and share the one big issue that keeps me at night. I couldn’t do it; I couldn’t pick just one. I punted on it till later. In trying to narrow it down, I asked others. They couldn’t pick just one, either.
It’s not an uncommon question around election years. Politicians, reporters and pollsters use it to take the pulse of average Americans. The answers have been roughly the same over the course of the last few cycles.
But maybe the reason I and so many others I spoke to couldn’t answer is because there’s actually a better question: Instead of asking what keeps people up at night, what if we asked Americans what wakes them up in the morning? What gets you out of bed, ready to meet your day? What fills you with a sense of purpose, and then moves you into action?
When you ask that question, people answer. It’s their families, their friends, the one cause to which they’ve devoted their professional life, the charities for which they fundraise, the protests and marches they attend on nights and weekends. The answers are different, but more often than not, there’s an answer.    
Their answers bring the future into focus for me. I don’t believe that good simply happens without us, but I see people taking action on creating that good, and I’m filled with hope.    
NationSwell will aspire to be a key part of that clarity and hope for you. Our team has always committed itself to finding the stories of people in this country rolling up their sleeves and getting to work on solving the problems in their own backyards. For the first half of this year, we’re going to keep a laser focus on telling the stories of how our nation’s leaders in social impact have committed their professional and personal lives to putting purpose into action. 
If you’re like them and you want to start leading and living by seeing your purpose in action, we’ll give you the tools and inspiration you need to get started and keep building.
With deep gratitude,
Anthony B. Smith
Vice President, Published Content & Growth
NationSwell 

One Man’s Mission to Help Others Grow Through Grief

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Bruce is no stranger to grief. He lost his father to a work accident, then his son, a Marine, died in a motorcycle accident one day after re-entering civilian life. Bruce sank into a depression, cutting himself off from everyone and everything.
He saw counselors and read self-help books, and finally drove to a church more than an hour away to attend a GriefShare program he had read about. Talking with others who had also lost loved ones made him feel a little better — or, at least, a little less alone. 
As Bruce continued to heal, he wanted to give that peace to others. He started a GriefShare program in his church. He believes everyone’s pain is easier to bear when they can also share hope and comfort.

This article was created by Weave: The Social Fabric Project of the Aspen Institute. Weave supports people who live in a way that puts relationships and community first. These “Weavers” lead with love and defy a culture of hyper-individualism that has left Americans feeling more lonely, distrustful and divided than ever. See their stories and learn more here.

How You Learn Will Matter Much More in the Future Workplace

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In today’s technological workplace, knowing how to learn is key to keeping pace with change. We’ve entered a new work culture, one where technology executes while humans learn and create new value. Being able to acquire new skills is becoming a skill in itself: In this new era, those who learn and adapt fastest will thrive.
We‘ve all heard that different people learn in different ways. But the idea that personal learning styles are crucial to successful education models has been debunked as little more than a myth. As it turns out, learning styles aren’t entirely innate, so it likely doesn’t matter whether you’re a visual learner or a kinetic learner, a “reflector” or a “theorist.” What matters more is your experience of learning — how you’ve learned how to learn — and the experience you bring to what you’re learning. 
While people might not strictly learn in their own unique style, they do tend to learn differently depending on their age. For example, several studies have compared the way that older and younger adults learn and found that there are important differences that can be leveraged by employers. 
A 2014 Brown University study scanned students’ brains as they learned. When humans acquire new information, our brain cell structures change in order to store it, a phenomenon known as “plasticity.” The researchers found that older and younger adults learned at the same rate, but they tended to store new information in different parts of their brains.
What does that mean in practice? One study compared traditional-age college students in their late teens and early 20s with adults returning to college in their 30s, 40s and 50s. It found that the older group tended to take more time to analyze and break down new information rather than simply memorize it. 
And yet another study found that older students were better at staying organized and felt less stressed by coursework than their traditional-age peers. “Students with more life-roles and responsibilities” — that is, older students — “may be more adept at the mechanics of time management such as making lists and scheduling activities in advance,” the researcher concluded.
There’s also evidence that as people age, understanding the process of learning becomes more important to them. Mid-career and older workers often want to understand why they’re learning a new skill — how it will contribute to their overall mission, how it fits in with what they already know and how they can deploy it creatively in the future. In contrast, younger learners are often ready to soak up knowledge as it’s presented to them and figure out how it fits into their work later.
This is important because all people are being called upon to keep learning new skills much later into adulthood than ever before. We’re in the midst of an unprecedented, rapid technology shift. Whereas previous generations could learn a trade and stay at it for a lifetime, today’s workers are asked to constantly assimilate new information, new skills and in some cases, entirely new jobs. 
As future-of-work strategist Heather McGowan, co-founder of Work to Learn, has said, “this shift [in technology] requires us to think differently about both work and learning. In the past, we learned once in order to work, but we must now work to continuously learn.” 

Then there’s the fact that older adults are staying on the job much longer. Summarizing a 2018 study, The Atlanta-Journal Constitution reported that in 2000, about one in 10 Americans aged 65 to 74 worked. Today, roughly a quarter of that age group works, with that figure expected to grow to one in three in the next few years. 
Economic strain can play a role in that, as do longer lifespans. But many older employees also say they simply take satisfaction from having meaningful work. As they reach the mid- to late-career stage, people start to take inventory of their work as it pertains to both purpose and self-expression. Some find a greater connection to their passions, whereas others wish to recast their career in greater alignment with their values.
The result is a much more multigenerational workforce, according to the AARP. It isn’t unusual for a 22-year-old and a 65-year-old to be learning the same new tech skill at the same time from the same supervisor. Or perhaps one employee is teaching the other — and either could be the instructor. That makes it important to understand your own learning style as well as that of others, so you can better communicate no matter if you’re the teacher or the student. 
Here’s an example: Imagine that your manager is showing you and a colleague a new process for publishing documents online. Are you most likely to: A) Memorize the sequence of clicks and keystrokes; or B) Figure out what each click in the sequence is doing?
If you answered “A,” you learn in a way typical of people in their 20s. It might seem easier to simply memorize or write down the sequence of commands without worrying about why it is the way it is. It might seem frustrating when your fellow employee insists on understanding the inner workings of every process. But bear with them, because it will help the lesson stick in the long run — and you might learn something in the process that you can apply in your work.
If you answered “B,” you learn in a way more typical of people over 30. You don’t just want to go through the steps, as you won’t remember them unless you know the logic behind each one. You should realize that your coworker might not need the full explanation of what they’re doing — they might just need a quick rundown of how to work the system. That doesn’t mean they’re not absorbing what’s being said, but they might need to come to you if they run into trouble since you might have a deeper understanding of the process.
When you understand how you approach new information and new skills, it will be easier to adjust your style to help others. As AARP’s Debra Whitman has noted, “In today’s era of rapid change… a single dose of education is not enough. Explicit knowledge is easily accessible from our devices and ripe for automation. Workers maintain their value by continuing to learn and adapt.”
As multigenerational workplaces embrace how different people learn at different stages of life, it will become easier to unify all employees across cultural and technological divides. In this way companies will be better able to optimize the different skills and experiences their age-diverse employees bring to the table. AARP believes that learning is a social act that is much more fun and meaningful when it happens in collaboration with others.

This article was produced in partnership with AARP. You can learn more here about how AARP is shaping the Future of Work.