A Summer of ‘Explosive’ Growth at the EdRedesign Lab

Rob Watson, Ed.M.’18, has seen firsthand how the work done at the EdRedesign Lab can make a difference in the lives of children around the country. He’s seen it in his hometown of Poughkeepsie, New York, through the Poughkeepsie Children’s Cabinet, an organization he co-founded to develop a city-wide cradle-to-career system of opportunities for and with young people and families. And now, the inaugural executive director of EdRedesign is uniquely positioned to help propel the cradle-to-career movement forward nationwide.

EdRedesign has seen significant growth in recent years thanks to new partnerships with national cradle-to-career organizations as well as significant funding that have brought new opportunities to educators on Appian Way and beyond.

“EdRedesign is at a pivotal moment of growth and development,” Professor Paul Reville, founder and faculty director of EdRedesign, said in a statement. “We are energized and enthusiastic about our bright future and proud to have the perfect team to take us there.”

In his new role as executive director, Watson helps EdRedesign navigate what he calls an “inflection point;” EdRedesign’s next steps aim to center the organization in a movement that’s seen significant momentum around the country in recent years.

“We’ve grown because our partnerships and our relationships are strong,” says Watson. “And we want to be an interdisciplinary hub at the university that brings together faculty, staff, students, centers, and initiatives to engage with national partners, proximate leaders, and communities that care deeply about one of the central questions of our time: How will we eliminate intergenerational poverty and create pathways for young people and families to educational attainment, lifelong civic engagement, and social and economic mobility?”

Below, Watson details what the changes at EdRedesign mean moving forward and talks about the explosive growth and opportunity the cradle-to-career movement has experienced.

What is the current moment like for EdRedesign?

We’re at a period of explosive growth. Paul Reville brought Tauheedah Jackson Ed.M.'22, EdRedesign’s deputy director and the director of the Institute for Success Planning, and I on board to innovate and take the organization to new heights in collaboration with our team of staff, fellows, and students. We’ve been able to establish major national partnerships that have allowed us to catapult the work forward and scale our supported communities. Between our communities of practice, our convenings, Senior Fellows Program, and new fellowship for Cradle-to-Career Partnership Leaders, we’re supporting around 50 different communities across the nation each year. We’re working with communities as diverse as the South Bronx to Birmingham, Alabama to the Mission District of San Francisco, San Antonio to Appalachia.

We’re also working closely with StriveTogether, the largest cradle-to-career network in the country. Their network spans more than

 70 communities in 30 states and Washington, D.C. This year, we joined forces to launch a Policy Implementation Community of Practice [which will] support state coalitions at the cutting edge of advancing cradle-to-career solutions. Additionally, we’re pursuing a number of strategic collaborations with Purpose Built Communities and Partners for Rural Impact, two of the most dynamic organizations in the nation driving social transformation in urban neighborhoods and rural communities.

This summer, we held our third annual Summer Institute for Neighborhood Leaders with the William Julius Wilson Institute at the Harlem Children’s Zone. We had about 300 leaders on campus in July, so that’s a major field-building effort. We’ve also attracted new philanthropic dollars to the organization.

What are some of the things you’ve been able to do thanks to these philanthropic infusions?

We recently received a $2.5 million investment from the Ballmer Group, one of the leading philanthropies in the nation focused on economic mobility led by Steve and Connie Ballmer.

We’re really excited about that investment, which will fund the launch of our new fellowship program for cradle-to-career partnership leaders. This fellowship aims to support the next wave of leaders of cross-sector place-based efforts who are new to the CEO role or aspire to it over the next few years. We see this as a major talent development play.

Under Tauheedah Jackson’s leadership, several years ago we launched our Institute for Success Planning — thanks to a $3 million gift from an anonymous donor — and that effort has grown significantly. We have about 28 communities that have been engaging with the Institute to create personalized, relationship-based systems of opportunity and supports for young people. It’s the idea that every child deserves an individualized 360 degree plan that supports their strengths and needs in school and in life; through Success Planning, we pair that child with a caring adult, someone we call a navigator, to make that happen.

Tauheedah recently facilitated a session at the White House earlier in the summer on personalized supports for kids. We are now a part of the National Partnership for Student Success, which was born out of the Biden administration, that is laser-focused on integrated supports for young people and families. I could go on and on.

We have new partnerships at the university, too. We partnered with Raj Chetty’s Opportunity Insights the last few years. We just launched a new Upward Mobility Fellowship for doctoral students. We’ve been working with several economics Ph.D. students in FAS for the last few years. This year’s summer Institute had the faculty director for the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard speaking about the Project on Workforce, too.

Where does EdRedesign see itself in the movement as it grows as an organization?

We see ourselves as a field catalyst, working hard with other partners to help a field come of age. Over the last 20-plus years, we’ve witnessed groundbreaking examples of this work, like Harlem Children’s Zone, the East Lake Foundation that spawned the Purpose Built Network, and the work in Cincinnati that led to the creation of StriveTogether. There’s been examples across the country, but these cross-sector efforts have become more mainstream in the fundamental the way we think about creating a more just society. We’re a part of that and we see ourselves as playing an important role in building this field.

Paul talks about it this way: 30-plus years ago, you had universities like Yale and others who helped social entrepreneurship become a field. Now there are graduate courses and master’s programs on the topic, and endowed faculty chairs advancing their agendas. That wasn’t always the case. So we hope to see the same thing happen with the cradle-to-career movement.

How does EdRedesign prioritize and keep that vision in mind amid all that growth?

One critical question we continue to ask ourselves is what are we uniquely positioned to do? There are other national organizations in this field and we’re thinking hard about how to complement one another and avoid duplication. We have identified several key lanes where we believe we can be of service to the field.

We have talent development, which is a big part of our work because universities are producers of talent. They create degree programs, fellowships, and executive education offerings. Universities are places where people come to learn things to go into the world and deliver results for people, so we have a number of different configurations for fellowships, communities of practice and convenings.

Actionable research is another. We produce knowledge as a university and we want to be in support of not just academic research, but cutting-edge actionable research insights that practitioners can take and use to improve the lives of young people and their communities.

We believe in broader movement building and systems change, so we’re working with national partners to engage policymakers at the federal, state and local levels. Public adoption of cradle-to-career approaches is the next frontier for our field. Julie Allen, our director of strategy and communications, is also leading an exciting body of work for us around narrative creation for our field that we hope to grow in the years to come.

We also have big ideas, like the Institute for Success Planning, which is all about transitioning our education and child development systems from a one-size-fits-all approach to personalized and responsive in meeting children where they are and giving them what they need in school and life.

So those are our lanes, and within those lanes we’re trying to get smarter on how we can deliver the greatest return on investment. A challenge for us has been learning how to say no to some things and prioritize others. We continue to refine our thinking around where we can add the most value and where it’s better to refer someone to a partner who can do another aspect of the work.

What’s it been like for you personally to be part of a field so full of enthusiasm and tangible results showing an impact?

I am so grateful to be doing this work in the hometown where I’m from. There’s not a day that goes by in my life where I’m not thinking about everything we’re talking about and working on in an actual place that shaped me. A place where I grew up in public housing and a low-income household,  witnessing the challenges of social inequality, but where I was lucky enough to be raised by a village of parents, extended family, and civic leaders that taught me my purpose was my community’s purpose; that our destinies and aspirations are intertwined. Whether it’s Poughkeepsie, Birmingham, or Dallas, there is a growing number of local leaders and organizations who are reimagining the power of place. This is unifying work, and it’s an exciting time for this field.

This is a field whose time has come because the people doing this work on the ground are bridge builders and connecting the dots across silos. It’s not just about reducing chronic absenteeism, getting more kids into college, or increasing wages . It’s about early childhood, K–12 education, out-of-school-time, the built environment, the social determinants of health, democracy, and so much more. In this field, Republicans, independents, and Democrats are coming together. People are working across urban, suburban, and rural landscapes. I don’t care what your ideology is, people care about their kids. And we have polling that shows the overwhelming interest on both sides of the aisle to give kids a strong start to life. So we feel good that this is a place where you can actually break through some of the deep divisions and polarization that have become so infamous on the national stage.

I know people who getting wins on the board every day in these deeply divisive times. This field has a lot to offer our country as an antidote not just to poverty and racial injustice, but to the very fundamental challenges to American democracy. We are unwavering in our commitment to dismantle  the inequities of place to unlock the talent and possibility of our most vulnerable and in the process, transform our civic life for generations to come.