Five Questions With: Karen Feldman

Karen Feldman is the executive director of Young Voices, which she founded in 2006
Karen Feldman is the executive director of Young Voices, which she founded in 2006

Karen Feldman is the executive director of Young Voices, which she founded in 2006. She brings over 25 years of experience in the youth leadership field, including program implementation, organizational management and fundraising. Feldman holds a bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College and a master’s degree in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

PBN: What inspired you to organize Young Voices? Could you describe your role with the organization since its inception?

FELDMAN: I founded Young Voices exactly 10 years ago. As a nonprofit leader, I had participated in countless initiatives to improve the lives of youth, from drop-out prevention to violence prevention. I noticed that every one of these efforts had something in common: They never got input from youth themselves about whether the initiative would work. It was no surprise that so many of these efforts failed to reach their hoped-for targets and wasted time and money, given that they never included the voice of the consumer. Could you imagine a business designing a product without ever once consulting with the consumer to see if they want it? And then being surprised when use of the product failed to reach expected levels? Yet that is exactly what was happening. I felt that this had to be addressed.

At Young Voices, we focus on getting data from low-income youth themselves about how to address social issues. For example, our youth survey the majority of students in their schools, asking them how schools could be improved to increase attendance – literally, how can we make our schools more attractive so students will use our product and show up to school? Then our youth present that data to school and district leaders, and partner with them to improve schools.

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PBN: The mission of Young Voices is to develop leadership skills in low-income youth. How have you used your master’s degree from Harvard University to develop an organizational model to help students and achieve this mission?

FELDMAN: Every day, I use the biggest lesson I learned from Harvard – to think creatively and “outside the box.” This is what caused me to innovate and create Young Voices. I saw a way to address some of our state’s most vexing social problems by involving youth themselves in designing solutions. I also surmised that, through working hands-on to improve city and state policies, youth would learn more advanced, transferable skills than they ever could in school. Ten years later, we know this is the case. Our alumni are successful in college and their careers at a rate far beyond their peers, getting full scholarships to schools like Brown, Bentley, Bryant and Brandeis.

Harvard also taught me to always think “what if?” and to be willing to try new approaches. I decided to experiment and see how low I could make the organization’s overhead, using a “virtual office,” donated space and combined administration functions. As a result, Young Voices is able to impact the lives of 180 young people every year on a budget of less than $300,000, with more than 95 percent of all funds going directly to staffing programs and resources for youth.

PBN: How do you measure the success of Young Voices and its programs?

FELDMAN: At Harvard, I also learned to use data for continuous learning and improvement. We use data to constantly improve our leadership training, and its effectiveness in transforming low-income youth into extremely successful adults. We track attendance at our program, and are able to correlate it with higher grades, growth in leadership skills and increased graduation from high school. After a decade of operation, we have a strong record of changing the trajectory of youths’ lives. We are fortunate to have a strong partnership with Providence College, which has now conducted three outside evaluations of Young Voices. They found that 100 percent of youth in our programs graduate high school, compared with a 75 percent graduation rate of their peers. Eighty-eight percent attend college, compared with the national rate of 48 percent. And 78 percent of Young Voices youth who started college just four years ago graduated on time, compared to the national rate of 59 percent completing their degrees within six years.

PBN: What are some of the steps Young Voices takes to help students develop social capital and leadership skills? Do you use a broad-based approach, or do you work on an individual level with the students?

FELDMAN: Our leadership training is extremely intentional, and focused on the development of each individual young person. Youth typically participate in Young Voices up to three times per week, for three years, so we really know our youth and their “learning edge.” The young people in our program are low-income, and have not had opportunities to develop their potential. We start doing that the moment they walk in the door. Their training begins in a classroom-based environment, where they engage in group activities that build skills in public speaking, networking and policy analysis. As their skills develop, they take on more challenging, hands-on activities out in the policy world, such as testifying at the Statehouse, meeting the education commissioner, leading presentations to corporate leaders across the state and speaking in front of 600 statewide leaders at the Rhode Island Kids Count Factbook Breakfast. In our program, youth learn things they could not possibly learn in school. Our leadership training is a dynamic process with no walls, where youth are given more and more challenging opportunities, until they have adult-level leadership skills, with every capacity to master the environments of competitive colleges.

PBN: How do you convince others – and the students themselves – that youth from low-income backgrounds can be and deserve to be successful in a socioeconomic system that was not designed to propel them forward?

FELDMAN: We focus on training our youth to be highly polished, articulate and persuasive leaders. When our youth speak at places like the Statehouse, they have the poise of adults. Just witnessing low-income minority youth with that kind of presence blows open the conventional stereotype of what “those youth” are capable of. Every youth in the organization sets concrete goals for increasing his or her leadership skills every six months. Over the years, as they see themselves exceeding their own personal goals, their confidence expands exponentially. Then they are willing to take on even harder leadership challenges, like addressing a crowd of 600 adult leaders – and to face them in spite of fear. They know they are leaders with the ability to reach for their dreams. This is why our alumni are so extraordinarily successful in college and in their careers, way beyond that of their peers. They know how to network, how to build key relationships, and how to navigate systems. Our alumni are succeeding in the corporate world, getting Ph.D.s and contributing to our community through public service. And that is what motivates me – seeing young people able to accomplish their wildest dreams, without any limitations in the way.

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