2024 Cradle to Career Network Convening Award Winners: Interview with KConnect

Welcome to Together for Together for Change, the podcast where we explore the transformative power of systems change and civic infrastructure. 

In this episode, we interview Cradle to Career Network members who won the Nancy Zimpher Courage in Leadership Award at our 2024 Cradle to Career Network Convening and learn more about the work that won them this award. 

Learn more at StriveTogether.org.

Transcript

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00:19 Dr. Paris Woods, chief program officer at StriveTogether

Hello, I'm Dr. Paris Woods, chief program officer at StriveTogether and your host for today's episode of Together for Change. In this mini season, we're exploring the transformative work of community partnerships that leads to meaningful change. Over the next three episodes, we'll be interviewing the 2024 winners of our annual Cradle to Career Network Convening awards.  

Today, I'm excited to welcome Dr. Shayla Young and Mark Woltman, vice presidents at KConnect in Kent County, Michigan. They are here to discuss KConnect’s work which recently earned them the Nancy Zimpher Courage in Leadership Award. This award recognizes an organization in the Cradle to Career Network that takes risks and fails forward on behalf of a vision to improve the lives of kids and families, creates a culture of accountability and challenges the status quo, and advocates for the inclusion of diverse perspectives. The KConnect team exemplifies these principles of curiosity, creativity and courage — values that are vital in the pursuit of equity for all children and families.  
 
KConnect has dedicated the last 10 years to dissolving deeply rooted inequities in Kent County through innovative approaches that connect systems and empower diverse groups. Their recent recognition with the Nancy Zimpher Courage in Leadership award is a testament to their commitment to not only addressing systemic barriers, but also to fostering inclusive environments where community voices are centered in decision making.  

To start, I'd love for each of you to share a bit about your role at KConnect and what this award means to you, personally and professionally. Shayla, let's start with you. 

02:19 Dr. Shayla Young, vice president at KConnect 

Hi, Paris. First and foremost, we want to just enter this space with gratitude. We are extremely grateful to have been selected, and it's such an honor to win the Nancy Zimpher Courage in Leadership Award, as well as be a part of the Accelerate Impact cohort with StriveTogether, so we are just grateful to be in this space with you today. I'll talk a little bit about why this is important for me to win such an award.  

So again, I'm Dr Shayla Young. I'm one of the vice presidents here at KConnect, and I started this work as a postdoctoral fellow here, and I heard this at a conference last week, and it fits my situation so well. Mark Woltman recruited me and Salvador Lopez, our president, made space for me within KConnect. Before being a backbone team member, I was a part of the network. I was on the High School to Career Workgroup, where we were focused on college access and postsecondary completion. And for me, that felt like my life's work at the time, because I have a very unique and blessed journey when it comes to my postsecondary success. And so being able to be a part of that work was critical for me at a time where I was receiving my doctoral degree, and I thought, hey, I'm fired up about this work, but I was called to leave the workforce. And upon leaving the workforce, Mark was like, “Hey, we know your passion. We know that this is something that you live, not just do, and we want you to stay a part of this work.” And so that's how, you know, I stayed engaged with KConnect as a network member, and when the opportunity came about to join the backbone team, it was really a no-brainer. So when we talk about the personal and professional impact of winning this award, it has been intertwined for me, because my journey with KConnect has been both personal and very professional. So, very thankful. 

04:26 Mark Woltman, vice president at KConnect 

Yeah, thank you, Dr. Woods. Mark Woltman here, vice president of KConnect. I'm a little bit of the resident historian. I've been here now almost 10 years, almost the full operations of KConnect. And I think seeing the arc of the journey for KConnect has been just an amazing thing to witness and be a part of.  

I think 10 years ago, when I walked into KConnect’s office for the first time, we basically had a community plan that our funding community, our government community and nonprofit community had put together, and there was nothing built. It was basically get people in a room and solve the biggest problems for our community. There was no how to do that. And so over the 10 years, we've built the how. We've built the process. We've built a movement of 150 organizations and 400 people really from nothing, just an idea. And when we originally hit the ground, we realized we had… not everybody was on board, and we had to bring people along and make a season for them to come along.  

And now we have gotten to the point where, after 10 years, we are a bit of an institution within the community, and we are still moving towards system change. So one of the things I would say about this award specifically is it's sometimes it's hard for us to stop and be recognized because we're so kind of in the background of the work, kind of moving it forward and highlighting the work of others. So we really want to thank StriveTogether for giving us this recognition, and can't believe that we've gotten this far.  

06:04 Dr. Paris Woods 

Absolutely. We're so grateful for you all joining us on today's podcast. So as I mentioned, KConnect has consistently demonstrated a commitment to curiosity, creativity and courage and its mission to achieve equity for all children and families. In a rapidly changing landscape, fostering a mindset that embraces innovation and adaptability is crucial for creating impactful solutions. Mark, I'd love to hear about how you foster this mindset within your team and across the partnership.  

06:36 Mark Woltman 

Yeah. Thank you, Dr. Woods. We at KConnect, from the beginning and to this day, have always had a mindset of failing forward. These are really sticky problems and issues that we're working with in the community, and there's no sort of straightforward answer to them. And so we know — we embrace experimental mindset around this. And that sounds really nice, right? Being experimental sounds really positive, and what that really means in practice is being really comfortable with failure, right? That you're not just one failure away from going away or shutting down, that you're gonna have many failures, and you're gonna have successes through those failures and learn from them.  

And so that's something that we've really instituted within our backbone staff and our network as a whole. We have our Accountability Partner Council, that 150 members, 400 people across our community that come together to decide the overall strategic direction of KConnect. And we embrace that culture. We come together in values around “yes, and.” We're not here to stop things. We're here to make them better, around experimentation, accountability, decision making and listening to one another. And we've, over the last 10 years, had developed systems and programs and funding sources and different things through this process, and it's a better community today than it was 10 years ago. 

08:06 Dr. Paris Woods  

Absolutely, and especially having an accountability council, I think folks might be interested in hearing a little bit more about that. Shayla, is there anything you'd like to add? 

08:16 Dr. Shayla Young 

Yeah, so I can talk a bit from accountability partners council view from being, you know, one a network member, but then also a backbone team member. And so the beauty about APC and those values that Mark mentioned is that we're in a space right now, KConnect has found its stride, where to the members of our network, it feels familiar. It feels familiar to come into a space to make collective decisions and to guide the work forward, right? And so that wasn't necessarily the case 10, 12, years ago, when this work was started. And so as a network member, and being able to take that ownership over the work, has been critical in terms of that buy in and moving the work forward for KConnect.  

We often have to communicate, right? Like KConnect is not just a backbone team. We are a network. We are a strong network. We are a network of community organizations, cross-sector network. And so being able to see that work advance and for those decisions to be made, and as well as the adaptability of the decision-making process. And so we saw a lot of this in our way of building a shared policy agenda, right? Taking those same values and connecting it to policy, connecting it to housing work, connecting it to education. And so, yeah, APC is one of the strongest parts, I think, of KConnect and what we do. 

09:50 Mark Woltman 

Yeah, and what I would add to that is that the accountability partner council was really designed so that we didn't have a small group of people in a room somewhere deciding strategies for a community. That was the purpose of it. So we invite everyone that's in the KConnect network, from workgroup members to backbone staff to consultants to board of trustees to general supporters, people that are familiar with KConnect’s work, and we talk about the tough issues.  

And it's a really — it's every six months we have a working meeting that everyone comes to, they roll up their sleeves and they get the work done. And we go on for the next six months and come back. It's not just kind of a “sit-and-get” conference. Everyone there is expected to be responsible for cradle to career within Kent County.  

10:39 Dr. Paris Woods 

You can certainly tell that community engagement is at the heart of your approach. You know, recognizing that the most effective solutions come from those who are directly impacted. I'm curious, by centering community voices in your decision-making processes, you've certainly created a model of empowerment and collaboration. I'd love to hear more about that.  

Shayla, how has community involvement shaped KConnect’s strategic direction, and what have you learned from centering their voices in your decision making? 

11:12 Dr. Shayla Young 

Yes, thank you, Dr. Woods. So just thinking about this work and engaging community, it was really broken down for me that this work is about individuals. It's about people. All this data that we're able to synthesize and visualize, right? These are representations of stories. I think it was Nakeisha Ricks-Pettyjohn that that that said: “Stories are data with soul.” And so just being able to hold space in this work to be led by community voice is critical. It's so critical for us that as we went and reassessed our common agenda enrollment or our community plan, community engagement was one of our six leverage activities that we're carrying along with us for the next 10 years, right? And so community engagement in a way that embeds community voice along every area part of the spectrum of this work. You know, what does that look like in the boardroom, to have community expertise at that table? What does it look like across all of our work groups, to have community expertise? And so that is something that we're operationalizing every single day.  

And when I think about the importance and how community engagement guides our work — I actually got this from the Racial Equity Leadership for Collective Action group recently — and it's that thought around the balcony view versus the dance floor view. So often we find ourselves high on the balcony when we talk about addressing some of these deeply rooted problems that we see persistent in our community, right? We're taking a very high up approach and those things are needed, but we also have to remember what it means to be on the dance floor. And let's just think about this for a second. When you're on the dance floor, you're looking for the person with the dance moves to show you what to do. Okay, like no one is doing that hustle or anything without looking at the person who knows what to do — looking at their feet. That's me for sure, on the dance floor. And so think of community expertise as the ones on the dance floor, showing you how to move, showing you what to do, ensuring that those strategies that you're building are actually relevant, right? Are community-driven, community-led.  

And so our compensation model that we've built around community engagement — back in 2016 we were able to have community engagement experts come together, and they built this compensation model really valuing the expertise of lived experience. And so we further that work by building an ebook around it, as well as engaging youth to develop the youth compensation model. I've once heard that nothing about us, without us, is for us. And so we have to keep voice leading this work, embedded in every part of this work, and, you know, ultimately leading to areas of, you know, upward mobility for those with lived experience expertise. 

14:31 Dr. Paris Woods 

I love that: Nothing about us, without us, is for us. Did I get that right? Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Mark, any additional insights you'd like to share?  

14:41 Mark Woltman 
 
Yeah, thank you. One of the great examples of our community engagement work — and with Dr. Young's leadership — is we built a Spanish language dashboard. It was one of the first in the country that was a Spanish language dashboard from cradle to career, right? And what we knew is that our Spanish-speaking community didn't have access to some of the data that a lot of the other community did. And so they didn't know what was going on, what was changing, where we've come from, where we are. And so we built this Spanish language dashboard and had community meetings to help people understand what was happening with third grade reading, what was happening with college enrollment, what was happening with thriving family income.  

And this started conversations, and a local community-based organization approached us about, can we help to develop a community-based funding model for driving philanthropic dollars into one of the lowest-income communities in Kent County, called Roosevelt Park. It's overwhelmingly Latino. And so we had these conversations, we built a funding model that was community-based decision making, and we drove, I think it was $200,000 from a local foundation, and had people apply. And they could apply pretty easily, pretty accessibly through any type of video from a cell phone, and be able to send that to us in the language of their choice. And have — we had community members who we compensated for their time making decisions about who got funding.  

And we funded six different projects, and the range of projects was just fascinating to see, from kind of an ad hoc group of parents that came together at a local school, most of them Spanish-speaking themselves, and said, “Hey, we want to do something around school safety. We want to be crossing guards and school safety kind of monitors.” And they put that together. They were compensated for their time, and it was just a thing that would never gotten funded in sort of a traditional philanthropic lens. All the way to funding one of this — a state-of-the-art machine at a local clinic. There's a clinic that operates in this neighborhood — we're actually located in this neighborhood — and they provide a lot of health services for the community.  

And what they were finding is that when they referred out people that had diabetes, which is a huge issue within the community, when they referred people out to other clinics to get follow up appointments and things, that the referral rates were very low. And there were all these barriers across the community to get to outside of the community, to another clinic. And so what we did is we funded an eye machine that scans the eyes every year of somebody who has diabetes to look for complications. And they were able to purchase the first eye machine of its kind in the state of Michigan that uses artificial intelligence, and this machine, now deployed in this neighborhood, started a conversation nationally with the company that runs that clinic, which has over 100 hospitals and 100,000 employees over the entire nation. And they were able to put together a committee at the national level to look at, what are the ethics around artificial intelligence, what are the laws and the policies we need to develop?  

And so this little ripple effect from a low-income neighborhood here in Grand Rapids, Michigan started a national conversation with a state-of-the-art machine that that is now deployed and the follow-up rates for people with diabetes for this machine are skyrocketing. And they're seeing that people are getting the care that they need, and it was all because of people in community had a voice of what they wanted and what they needed.  

18:35 Dr. Paris Woods 

What great examples. Thank you for offering those. So, you know, taking risks is often necessary. Speaking of AI for driving innovation and creating meaningful change. And KConnect’s journey over the past decade is a testament to this principle.  

So as you reflect on your organization's history, I'd love to hear about a specific risk that stands out to you. Understanding the context behind that decision and its ramifications can provide inspiration for other organizations striving to navigate similar challenges. Mark, can you tell us about a decision or risk you took that you're particularly proud of and how it has shaped KConnects work?  

19:20 Mark Woltman

Yeah, and I would say that we are currently taking this risk, right? We're currently living the risk that I'm going to talk about. But one is getting into policy and advocacy. And so, you know, we have traditionally been known for convening, making good decisions around strategy, visualizing data and doing that thing, and a lot of people can get behind that. But once you start moving into the policy and advocacy space, some different conversations happen.  

And so we brought on Dr. Young two years ago at this point, to really help to operationalize our policy and advocacy and community engagement work, which we call PACE. And we have, in the first year of Dr Young's post-doctoral fellowship, she really kind of helped to plan and bring process to what policy and advocacy would look like. And in this second year, we have operationalized it, where just last week, we had our first ever Advocacy Day, where we were going to advocate and educate lawmakers around our shared policy agenda.  

And what we're finding out is that, you know — and we knew this going into it — that when you take stands on policy and you advocate, you have some people who are fans of those and some that are not. And so we've had to have some tough conversations about what we're doing and how we're doing it, but we're not changing necessarily direction. But, you know, how we work and… who we're working with, and, you know, I think that's a space where we knew that we needed to if we were going into policy and advocacy, we needed to diversify our funding so that if we ever got into a space where what the network decided, you know, a policy item that's a funder maybe didn't agree with, we needed to be able to diversify our funding, and so we've, we've been able to do that through national partners and our consulting work.  

And so that's a TBD, right? We'll let you know how that works out. But that is one that we're living right now. Policy advocacy was an original part of our community plan. It was the one of the last parts that we operationalized and lifted because we had to get to the point where we had the network, we had a movement behind us, we had something to advocate for, and we had the trust of the community to do it. 

21:41 Dr. Paris Woods 

Dr. Young, what would you add? 

21:43 Dr. Shayla Young 

Yeah, well, I just first want to use this platform too to thank Mark. I want to thank Mark because it was a lot of his vision, too for this work that helped order the steps for how we were going to actually operationalize this. And so when I think about our policy and advocacy work and the risk associated with it, the one thing that I think we've been able to lean on, outside of diversifying our funding, is having a strong process. And so think back to those values that we mentioned when we talked about our Accountability Partners Council, when we talked about the adaptability of that shared decision-making model that we've built, we were able to take that and shift that into something that we call the PACE convening.  

And so, as Mark mentioned earlier, you have our board member and a community member having the same decision-making power around our policy agenda. And so that is something that is true to KConnect, that carries on even into this very, right, risky territory for us. And so that is, you know, one thing that I'd like to note about that work, as well as say that with our decision making at the policy level, there's so many different facets of it that require, like the checks and balances of it. So you have the policy and advocacy workgroup that is led by policy and advocacy experts, both locally and statewide. You have us as a backbone team, having decision-making ability. You have, obviously, the network making those larger decisions, and it's not just a stagnant process for us, but we're able to employ a shared decision-making model at different areas of the work.  

So for instance, one of our policy priorities that's currently on our shared policy agenda, which has seven different priorities in the areas of home and family stability, K-12, academic success and postsecondary completion. One of those specific policies actually came by way of our emergent advocacy process.  

Think about when you're asked to sign on to something as an organization, what are some of those things that you take into account when you sign on, when you say “yes”? Well, one of those things is, who sent it to me? Is this a trusted, you know, connection, an organization that we trust, or maybe even an organization that has influence over us? And so we were able to develop our first emergent advocacy process based off of what we were being asked to sign on to as an organization, ensuring that every part of this very risky territory has a process connected to it, so that we can lean on that. 

24:36 Mark Woltman 

Yeah, and I would say that the risk is definitely worth it, right? We are on the cusp of making great changes for Kent County and the state. Kent County children and families don't have a lobbyist in Lansing working for them, right? Companies do. Sectors do. Our Kent County children and families don't.  

And so we are leveraging our network, our know-how, our community engagement, to be able to advocate for what is best for children and families along that cradle-to-career pipeline. And so while we talk about the risk, and the risk is real, it is completely worth it, because if we are able to change these systems, we will change the trajectory of children and families here in Kent County for the positive. 

25:25 Dr. Paris Woods 

Well, thank you for taking this on. You know, as they say: high risk, high reward. So hopefully we'll learn from you as you navigate the policy and advocacy landscape moving forward.  
 
As you know, the Cradle to Career Network is working toward a shared goal of putting 4 million more young people on a path to economic mobility. One of the key ways we catalyze this important work is by creating touch points for network members to share learnings with each other, the best practices that are transforming systems to better serve all youth and families. To that end, what advice would you give other place-based cradle-to-career partnerships seeking to advance equitable outcomes in their communities? Either of you, please feel free to jump in.  

26:16 Mark Woltman 

Yeah, thank you, Dr. Woods. I think this is… you know, we've learned a lot over the last 10 years of failing forward as we talked about before. I think one of the things that is really important is that communities fund collective impact work, that the philanthropic community, the local funders, get together and really fund the work. I think too many times we see collective impacts trying to do it on half a salary and a small budget, and that's just not going to make — you're not going to get system change from that. And so my advice to communities is really fund collective impact system change work, because it'll pay off in the long run.  

The other piece of advice is really investing in your backbone if you're a collective impact, where you have turnover after turnover, we need to figure out a way to invest in our backbone, and that's one of the things that we have invested in as a community and as KConnect, is our backbone staff, and we really haven't had a any turnover in the last four years. We had one person that was recruited into an executive director position, and we still are working with that person — so that's fantastic — but we come together as a team. We have fun, we do hard work, and we make sure that we have each other's back. And so really investing in your backbone team.  

I think, also have grace around what you're doing in the end, how big the things that you're trying to do and the things that you are swimming against, remember to have grace for yourself as you're doing it. And I would say the other advice is just do it, right? Just go out there and do it. What you find out is that you can learn these different spaces pretty quickly. You may feel intimidated by them. I think, you know, some of us felt intimidated by policy or advocacy, but you just go out and do it, and you learn it, and you're, you're going to be great at it. So just go out and do it.  

And then, you know, I think, be innovative. KConnect has always been kind of a source of innovation. We have recently launched in the last year a consulting side of our work called ConnectUs, and we're working in communities and different spaces, from projects all the way from — you know, that aren't straight cradle-to-career projects, from working with a group of artists to working on a river restoration project to health care out of state. And so we have that available, and we're working with different communities, because we've learned a lot around decision making and strategy and research and data, and so we're trying to give that back as well. 

28:58 Dr. Shayla Young 

If I had to add anything to that, I would just say it took about — and Mark, historian, you tell me — it took about 10 or so years for KConnect to catch this stride, maybe eight years, right. There was a lot of foundational and core work, and now seeing the fruit of the labor right is really, really showing, and it's showing at a very high pace.  

And so I would say that there, within that time, I'm sure there were different bouts of discouragement, there were those times where there was failure, and yes, we were learning from failure, but we also were feeling, as you know, any organization might be out there feeling failure right now. Maybe they're feeling discouraged. Just know that for us, it took a while to catch our stride, but when we caught it, we started to run. And so just very thankful again to have this space, Dr. Woods, with you to talk more about KConnect and again, we cannot express with words our gratitude for receiving the Nancy Zimpher Courage in Leadership Award. So, thank you 

30:19 Dr. Paris Woods 

Absolutely. So well deserved and such great advice. As Mark said: “Just do it.” Systems change takes time, and there's no time like the present to get started putting in the work.  

Dr. Shayla Young and Mark Woltman, thank you for joining me today and sharing your insights on the impactful work of KConnect. We look forward to celebrating your achievements and continuing our shared journey to put 4 million more young people on a path to economic mobility.  

For our listeners, stay connected with us by visiting StriveTogether.org for updates on our work and upcoming episodes of the podcast. You can learn more about KConnect by visiting their website at K-Connect.org. Until next time this has been Together for Change.