When I first learned about the important work LEO is doing to address poverty across the country, I was struck by how naturally it fits within the mission of Notre Dame to be a force for good in the world. And now as I have taken on the role of stewarding LEO’s work, I wanted to share my journey in getting here and why this work is so important.
You see, I grew up in the shadow of Notre Dame, just a few miles north of campus. I come from a Notre Dame family, but I’m just now returning to South Bend after spending several decades working at a national level on domestic policy issues.
My belief in LEO’s mission comes from all the experiences in my life, which all led me here.
Through my own family history, I heard about the challenges of starting with very little from my grandparents, who immigrated to South Bend
after World War I from a small Croatian village in Austria. They boarded a ship in Germany in their early twenties, leaving most of their family behind, not speaking English and with only a few dollars in their pocket. After working in a variety of service roles, they were able to save up enough money to open a small neighborhood grocery store, which my dad and his siblings worked in every day. That store closed in the early 1960s, about the time that South Bend itself was going through economic turmoil with the closing of the Studebaker auto company which was headquartered here. My own history demonstrated to me in very real ways the promise of opportunity–but I also have thought a lot about how a significant bump in the road could have meant harder times for my family.
My interest in understanding the complexities of poverty and what stands in the way of opportunity also came from my experiences of regularly driving from South Bend through the South Side of Chicago where I saw the Robert Taylor Homes. This was an enormous
hi-rise public housing project that sat to the east of the freeway that housed over 25,000 Chicagoans experiencing poverty at its peak. The freeway created a physical barrier that separated residents from the surrounding neighborhoods, and the housing authority did little to maintain the buildings. I became deeply interested in how that type of development had occurred and how to better address the needs and the dignity of people living there.
In my professional life, I’ve been driven by a desire to provide opportunity and lift up the lives of the underserved. In my time working in public policy, I saw how rigorous research and evidence on what works can lead to impact for millions of people. During my time working on federal education policy, we leveraged our nation’s best research on literacy to design programs on effective reading instruction. And research on how to effectively disseminate antiretroviral drugs to people living with AIDS led to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which has saved 26 million lives around the world. But there’s a big gap in translating research into policy, and that’s a role that LEO is filling.
I’ve also been on the side of working with non-profits who are tackling some of our biggest challenges. Social service providers are doing challenging work, and they have a lot on their plate. Undertaking the type of rigorous research that LEO tackles takes
leadership, capacity, good data, and a strong commitment. After working with CEOs of nonprofits across the country to help them grow and scale their work and serving on the boards of these organizations, I have a deep appreciation and respect for the work
they do every day and the vulnerability it takes to open yourselves up to finding out if your programs are doing what they are designed to do.
These experiences all drew me to LEO. The work we do is different from many others who are involved in rigorous research, in that we put providers and the people they serve front and center in the work. The fact that we do this work at no cost to our service provider partners is a real benefit.
And we are at an exciting point in our work. LEO has over 110 studies underway or completed. LEO’s research is increasingly being put into action; we are replicating effective programs, we are actively growing our engagement with policymakers, and other nonprofits are learning from our results. All this is built off of innovative service providers who put the people they serve first and treat them with dignity and respect. In the pages that follow, you’ll hear directly from those partners, who authored nearly all of the articles in this issue. It is an easy and important mission to get behind, and I’m honored to join this team and lead us to our next phase of impact.