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Broad Resident Leadership Story: Carmita Vaughan
I am currently the Director of Dropout Prevention and Recovery for Chicago Public Schools. The journey to this current position has been a long and circuitous one, but has ultimately placed me precisely where I've longed to be - in a position to positively impact the lives of inner city youth. Throughout my life I have had the desire to give back to inner city communities similar to the one in Birmingham, AL, where I grew up. I was fortunate to be offered educational opportunities that were not common to children reared in the housing projects where I lived. Those opportunities fueled my quest for lifelong learning and eventually led to a successful private sector career. However, something was always missing. I never lost the desire to assist those who were less fortunate. I never stopped thinking about the neighborhood I had left behind and the scores of children in neighborhoods like those around the country whose stories would unfortunately not come to the same successful end as mine did. I began my career in the private sector at Procter & Gamble (P&G) as an operations manager. At P&G I learned effective management tools and strategic problem solving methods. The management opportunities sharpened my ability to lead, set priorities and solve complex problems in a dynamic environment. While there, I also continued to focus on my desire to address the concerns of inner city youth. I used the skills attained professionally to spearhead a partnership between P&G and a local area high school to increase high school graduation exam scores. In working closely with the principal and other school administrators, I observed that while many of these leaders had great ideas and a sincere desire to help children succeed, they often lacked the management prowess to successfully achieve their goals or bring them to scale. I decided to pursue an MBA at Kellogg with concentrations in finance and public/nonprofit management to broaden my skill base and develop the proficiency necessary to comprehend the complex issues facing the public sector. My ultimate desire was to make my true passion for improving the lives of inner city youth with education my life's work, rather than my "side gig." After obtaining my MBA, I decided to return to the private sector to further hone my strategy and marketing skills; recognizing that strong business skills are invaluable to implementing any community agenda. During that time I learned of the Broad Residency in Urban Education and found that the stars had finally aligned. I had remained passionate and focused on my vision of helping youth and had weaved that commitment into every stage of my professional career. The Broad Residency opportunity finally allowed me to take an aggressive step towards realization of my long term goal - to revitalize urban neighborhoods through the education of its youth. Since joining Chicago Public Schools (CPS) I have spearheaded a number of strategic district initiatives. These have included establishing the Turnaround Specialist Program to recruit high-performing principals to some of our most challenging schools and collaborating on development and distribution of High School Scorecards to provide transparency to parents and communities regarding school performance. I also led the development of a 27.5 million dollar federal grant proposal to provide additional faculty support and compensation in our highest-need schools through execution of a district-wide performance-based pay initiative for teachers and principals. This proposal led to CPS being awarded the largest competitive federal grant it has ever received. Management of the aforementioned initiatives provided me opportunities to leverage my skills and deliver substantial results while gleaning insight about the intricacies of large urban districts. In my current position in the Department of Dropout Prevention and Recovery, I am responsible for development of a comprehensive strategy and five-year implementation plan to increase CPS graduation rates by 2010. This entails management of nine current dropout prevention and recovery programs and organization restructure of 42-member department to better align staff and resources to a systemic approach toward addressing off-track and out-of-school youth. My current work provides the ideal opportunity to obtain even greater management responsibility while remaining close to the work that impacts the daily lives of our neediest students. Right now, I'm doing my life's work and fervently pursuing my personal passion. Many people spend years harboring a dream only to have if falter simply because they were never courageous enough to work toward it. I'll forever be in debt to The Broad Residency for providing me the vehicle to courageously pursue my dream. 
A Day in the Life of a Resident: Matt Hill
What is the day-to-day experience of a Broad Resident like? One of our current Broad Residents, Matt Hill who is in his second year of the Residency, tells you in his own words. Additional journal entries can be found on The Broad Residency website. Matt Hill's Journal #1 7:30 - 9:30am - The Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce hosted an event for our State Administrator, Dr. Kimberly Statham. Dr. Statham gave a "State of the District" speech which highlighted the successes and challenges that we are facing at Oakland Unified. The event was a great opportunity for me to connect with some of our local leaders regarding the work that we are doing with Expect Success! (our multi-year reform initiative). I had a great conversation with a local non-profit fundraising director about a new state grant that we could apply for to help with some of our targeted school interventions. 9:30 - 10:00am - As I headed back to the office, I received a call from our interim Manager of Custodial Services and we discussed our fast track redesign of this Service Area. We are shifting our service model for the '07-08 school year. Instead of custodians being staffed at each school site, they will be staffed centrally and will be available for the schools to purchase as a service. We reviewed our cost and service level assumptions to ensure they were equitable for all schools. 10:00 - 11:00am - I sat down with our new Assistant Program Manager for Expect Success! This is her second week on the job, so I wanted to check in to see how she was doing and prepare for our upcoming leadership meeting. We discussed the status of our 28 projects and highlighted the action items that we wanted to discuss with the leadership team. 11:00 - 1:00pm - Every week, I hold a project meeting with our senior leadership team (State Administrator, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Services Officer [a.k.a. COO], Chief Academic Officer, and Chief of Community Accountability). During the meeting the leadership team discusses hot topics for the Expect Success! project and makes decisions regarding 2-3 of the initiatives. This week we discussed our redesign of central office, our funding needs for the project, and our school portfolio management process. 1:00pm - 1:30pm - During the meeting, one of our senior leaders had a concern about the status of one of our projects, so I held an impromptu meeting with her to brainstorm on a potential solution to the issue and to identify next steps. 1:30 - 2:30pm - One of our initiatives is called Service Economy - creating a internal market by devolving dollars to schools and allowing them to purchase central office services. I was the project manager on that project, and I am backfilling the role during our budget season. I worked with our Chief Services Officer and her team to develop a new list of optional services that the principals could purchase during the '07-08 school year. One of our Network Executive Officers (a.k.a. Area Superintendent) invited me to present the new service offering to her principals. I was very excited about the opportunity because it provided me with the opportunity to visit a school and talk with the individuals (teachers and principals) that are doing the most important work of the district. The meeting went well, and the principals (for the most part) were excited about the new services. 2:30 - 3:00pm - On my way back to the office I had a phone call with one of our partners, Full Circle Fund. Full Circle Fund is a non-profit that offers professionals who volunteer their skills and time to help organizations improve. They are working with us in several areas, but this call was dedicated to fundraising. Full Circle is helping us develop an appropriation request for some federal dollars to support our technology needs. 3:00 - 5:00pm - We are currently interviewing to fill a vacancy on our project team. Our Financial Associate for Expect Success! is leaving next Wednesday and if we don't find a replacement soon, I will be picking up another role! Unfortunately, we interviewed two candidates, but we were not able to find a candidate that was a match, so the search will continue… 5:00 - 7:00pm - Finally, a little downtime to catch up on some emails (80!) and work. My major focus was to prepare for my weekly project manager meeting. I meet with the project team every Friday to discuss the current status of the project and to ensure we are working together to drive the project forward. 7:00 - 9:00 - I went to the gym. Well… that is what I put on my calendar, but I was exhausted so I went home to grab dinner with my wife (who is a saint for putting up with my crazy hours right now). 9:00 - 11:00 - I finish up responding to emails and read some data about the high school that I am going to visit in the morning. Dr. Statham has initiated a wonderful new policy that encourages all of her team to visit schools during the morning.
Broad Resident Alumni: Where Are They Now?
A proud product of the New York City public school system, Julie Horowitz knew at an early age she would be involved in education. "I cared about education and believed it could be the great equalizer," she said. "I realized how essential it was to shaping one's values and life path." Currently, Julie is the Executive Director of The Young Women's Leadership Foundation (YWLF), a New York City-based non-profit that supports two key educational initiatives: (1) a network of all-girls public schools; and (2) a school-based college guidance program, CollegeBound, which operates both in the organization's girl's schools as well as in co-ed public high schools. When Julie joined YWLF last fall, the organization was celebrating its 10th anniversary. Back in 1996, their flagship school, the Young Women's Leadership School of East Harlem, was the first public all-girls schools to open in more than 30 years. Building upon a track record of impressive outcomes for both the girls' schools and CollegeBound, Julie is now focused on growth. Specifically, she is working on opening a girl's school in Newark, NJ in 2008, with the support of Mayor Cory Booker and working to expand CollegeBound sites to more NYC high schools this fall. "I work with a great team of people and for a mission I believe in," she said. Together we are taking YWLF to the next level." Julie has a unique background in the education industry. In the last 10 years, she has worked in the public, private and non-profit education sectors. She began her career as a public high school teacher in New York City and Cape Town, South Africa. During her teaching experience Julie made the decision to obtain a Master of Business Administration from Yale University. "I wanted to learn the tools of business and management and apply them to education. At the time, I had no idea how I would do that, but it felt like the right thing to do, so I took the leap. And it was a turning point for me because it gave me a new language and new skills that I could apply to the work I cared about." After business school, Julie worked as an equity research analyst at Furman Selz, LLC, where she was one of the first analysts to provide the institutional investment community with research coverage of companies in the for-profit education industry. Julie left Wall Street to hold business development positions for three education-related enterprises - Children First (a private child care company), Edison Schools, as well as a now-defunct educational Internet company. "Looking back now, it was a fair amount of jumping around, but provided me with a variety of experiences that help me in my role today," says Julie. Julie received great training and perspective in these roles, but soon realized her heart truly was in public interest. "When Joel Klein was appointed Chancellor," Julie says, "this was the moment, this was the city I loved, it's my home, it's where I went to school, I decided I wanted to work with Joel Klein." Julie became the Chief of Staff to the Deputy Chancellor for Operations at the NYC Department of Education. During her tenure at the DOE, Julie was accepted into the inaugural cohort of The Broad Residency as an Associate Broad Resident in the class of 2003-2005. Julie says, "The Broad Residency was an invaluable opportunity to share and learn alongside a group of exceptional people wrestling with many of the same challenges we face in New York. I am still in contact with several Broad Residents today." After working at the DOE for 3 ˝ years, Julie says, "I felt like it was time for me to run something, to lead an organization." This led Julie to where she is today as Executive Director of YWLF. Julie plans to continue to work in education over the long term. "I have dedicated myself to the field of education," she said. There are different roles for different times in your life. Right now I am excited about and committed to expanding the work of YWLF." Julie's top lessons learned and words of advice for young professionals considering work in the education field:
The Broad Residency plans to attend The Consortium's upcoming 41st Annual Orientation Program & Career Forum as an exhibitor at the Career Forum. If you are planning to attend, please stop by our booth at the Career Forum to learn more about The Broad Residency. The Consortium The Broad Superintendents Academy, a rigorous 10-month executive management program designed to prepare CEOs and senior executives from business, non-profit, military, government and education backgrounds to lead urban public school systems, is now recruiting for the 2008 Academy. If you are interested in learning more, please visit www.broadacademy.org. If you are interested in applying, please submit your resume as an MS Word document to academy@broadcenter.org by 5pm PST on Friday, September 7, 2007.
The Broad Center The mission of The Broad Center for the Management of School Systems is to raise student achievement by recruiting, training and supporting executive leadership talent from across America to become the next generation of urban school district leaders. Established in 2001, The Broad Center identifies talented leaders who have the passion, knowledge and skill to take on executive leadership roles in urban education. In addition to The Broad Residency, the Center operates The Broad Superintendents Academy, a ten-month executive management program to train working CEOs and other top executives from business, non-profit, military, government and education backgrounds to lead urban public school systems. For more information about The Broad Center, go to www.broadcenter.org. The Broad Foundation The Broad Center is funded by The Broad Foundation. The Broad Foundation is a national venture philanthropy established by Eli and Edythe Broad, a renowned business leader who founded two Fortune 500 companies, SunAmerica Inc. and KB Home. Based in Los Angeles, The Broad Foundation's mission is to dramatically improve urban K-12 public education through better governance, management, labor relations and competition. The Broad Foundation's Internet address is www.broadfoundation.org.
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