Completing the Fellowship Journey and Achieving Results

Fif­teen out­stand­ing lead­ers from across the nation recent­ly com­plet­ed the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Chil­dren and Fam­i­ly Fel­low­ship^®, an inten­sive 21-month lead­er­ship pro­gram for senior social-sec­tor exec­u­tives. Equipped with a mas­tery of the prin­ci­ples, skills and tools of the Foundation’s Results Count^® frame­work, the 2019–2021 class of Fel­lows is the eleventh cohort since the program’s estab­lish­ment in 1993.

“I am excit­ed that anoth­er group of amaz­ing lead­ers is join­ing the exist­ing net­work of Fel­lows deeply com­mit­ted to results, data and equi­ty,” says Lisa Hamil­ton, pres­i­dent and chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of the Foun­da­tion. ​“I con­grat­u­late these action-ori­ent­ed lead­ers for pow­er­ing through the Fellowship’s demand­ing require­ments in the mid­dle of a pan­dem­ic, an eco­nom­ic cri­sis and a racial reckoning.”

Like pre­vi­ous Fel­lows, each mem­ber of class 11 select­ed an over­ar­ch­ing result that guid­ed their work toward spe­cif­ic, mea­sur­able improve­ments for large num­bers of young peo­ple and fam­i­lies. The 2019–2021 Fel­lows also were the first class to con­tribute to a shared result aligned with the Foundation’s recent­ly announced Thrive by 25® focus: All youth ages 14–24 will have the nec­es­sary con­nec­tions to school, work and fam­i­ly to achieve equi­table out­comes of success.

Progress Toward Top-Lev­el Results

Here are exam­ples of how five Fel­lows made progress toward their cho­sen results:

Charles Bradley, divi­sion direc­tor of the Meck­len­burg Coun­ty Depart­ment of Social Ser­vices in North Car­oli­na, focused on ensur­ing that all young peo­ple leav­ing the county’s fos­ter care sys­tem are posi­tioned to thrive. Over the course of the Fel­low­ship, the coun­ty increased the num­ber and per­cent­age of teenagers and young adults placed with rel­a­tives and in fam­i­lies. Rel­a­tive care­givers, who pro­vide homes for 178 chil­dren, are now receiv­ing finan­cial assis­tance, train­ing and resources to help care for these young people.

Regi­na Can­non, chief equi­ty and impact offi­cer at C4 Inno­va­tions, which advances recov­ery, well­ness and hous­ing sta­bil­i­ty for mar­gin­al­ized peo­ple, focused on hous­ing. Specif­i­cal­ly, she worked to make sure that young adults expe­ri­enc­ing home­less­ness in eight demon­stra­tion com­mu­ni­ties in the U.S. Depart­ment of Hous­ing and Urban Devel­op­ment (HUD) Con­tin­u­ums of Care pro­gram have appro­pri­ate hous­ing place­ments and sup­port ser­vices. She has helped these com­mu­ni­ties incor­po­rate racial equi­ty into the redesign of their home­less response sys­tems and has spread Results Count con­cepts through­out the HUD home­less­ness field.

As man­ag­ing direc­tor of pol­i­cy and pro­grams at Advance­ment Project Cal­i­for­nia, a racial jus­tice orga­ni­za­tion with exper­tise in research, advo­ca­cy and pol­i­cy, Kar­la Pleitéz How­ell works to make sure all Cal­i­for­nia chil­dren are ready for school and com­mu­ni­ty suc­cess. Dur­ing the Fel­low­ship, she engaged with part­ners in Los Ange­les Coun­ty to ensure that $265 mil­lion were allo­cat­ed to high­est-need schools. These schools’ stu­dents, pre­dom­i­nant­ly Black and of col­or, will now have access to addi­tion­al math and lan­guage arts instruc­tion and one-on-one tutoring.

As exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Office of Com­mu­ni­ty Schools for the New York City Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion, Sarah Jonas ini­tial­ly chose to focus on ensur­ing that all New York City youth grad­u­ate from high school on time and are ready for col­lege. Inspired by the Fel­low­ship to think big and act accord­ing­ly, she changed her goal to using com­mu­ni­ty schools, which serve as hubs to bring togeth­er a range of part­ners and sup­ports for chil­dren and fam­i­lies in low-income neigh­bor­hoods, as a way of achiev­ing equi­table results for all young peo­ple in our nation’s edu­ca­tion sys­tem. Col­lab­o­rat­ing with anoth­er class 11 Fel­low, Kris­ten Harp­er, direc­tor for pol­i­cy devel­op­ment for Child Trends, Jonas helped estab­lish and cur­rent­ly chairs the Brook­ings Task Force on Next Gen­er­a­tion Com­mu­ni­ty Schools, which will cre­ate a road map for expand­ing com­mu­ni­ty schools across the Unit­ed States.

“All of the class 11 Fel­lows have demon­strat­ed what can hap­pen when you lead with data, focus on equi­table results and com­mit your­self to being an agent of large-scale change,” says Leslie Boissiere, the Foundation’s vice pres­i­dent for Exter­nal Affairs. ​“By hon­ing their abil­i­ty to lead through uncer­tain­ty and rapid change, these Fel­lows have accom­plished great results in a dif­fi­cult moment.”