Scott Morgan, Founder and CEO of Education Pioneers

As we were wrapping up our Challenge focused on education, the University of Michigan’s Nonprofit and Public Management Center (NPM) was kicking off a Challenge of their own focused on…what else? Education!

NPM’s Social Impact Challenge is an opportunity for graduate students to collaborate on tackling real issues for an organization that focuses on social impact. This year’s Challenge partner was Education Pioneers, a national nonprofit that identifies, trains, connects and inspires a new generation of leaders dedicated to transforming our education system so that all students receive a quality education. The multidisciplinary teams of Michigan students (from the schools of business, public policy, education and social work) were tasked with developing an effective growth strategy for Education Pioneers to reach their goal of attracting, preparing and advancing 10,000 new leaders by 2023, especially in hard-to-staff/high-need areas like Detroit.

As an Education Pioneers alumna, daughter of a K-8 School Principal, and native Detroiter, our January Challenge Detroit project with Excellent Schools Detroit and U of M’s Challenge with Education Pioneers meant a lot to me! I couldn’t wait to see what strategies the U of M students had created or soak in the knowledge shared during the Social Impact Challenge panel (more on that later).

Upon arriving at the event, I learned that 17 teams entered the Social Impact Challenge this year, and 4 of those teams were finalists. The finalists presented their recommendations to a panel of judges, including Scott Morgan, Founder and CEO of Education Pioneers, and Dan Varner, CEO of Excellent Schools Detroit. There were several posters up detailing each team’s strategy, and it was exciting to see how much work the students had put in and the recommendations they had created.
A short while after that, people started to trickle into the room – the finalists were done presenting and now we were getting ready to move into the panel and announcement of the Social Impact Challenge winner (which came with a nice $2,500 prize). The panelists were Scott Morgan (who immediately remembered meeting me last summer in DC while I was an EP Fellow – yes, I was excited!), Dan Varner, Kendra Hearn, Assistant Professor at U of M’s School of Education and Lesley Redwine, CEO and Superintendent of New Urban Learning (and also the big boss to one of our other Fellows, Marlo Staples)!

The big question addressed by the panel was, “What would it take to attract education leaders and managers to Detroit?” We discussed the challenges (negative narrative around the city, financial inflexibility, perceived safety, lack of places to land, etc.), but what really resonated with me were the solutions, which included:

• Seeing Detroit as this perfect mix of challenge + opportunity
• Helping people build strong networks (so they feel a sense of inclusion when deciding if they want to live and work in Detroit)
• Providing a sense of affirmation and acknowledgement for new talent, especially those who are not native to Detroit
• Exposing people to the bright spots in Detroit (because, as Dan Varner stated, “There’s a lot of space [here], but Detroit is not empty.”)

Me and Sarah, one of the other Fellows in my Education Pioneers Cohort + 2nd Year MBA/M.Ed. at University of Michigan

The event culminated with the announcement of the Social Impact Challenge winner (congrats Team 2 “Focus Education”!) and a keynote from Scott Morgan, who shared three great things about leadership:

1. Leadership matters.

2. Leadership has tremendous leverage.

3. Leadership is the key lever to transforming urban education.

This event was a definite win for me. I reconnected with Scott, reunited with one of the Fellows in my EP cohort (who is an MBA/M.Ed. student at U of M), and, most importantly, the issue of attracting education leadership in Detroit was addressed at a high level. With the right leaders in place, we will have no choice but to continue to make tangible strides toward transforming the education system in Detroit.