Posts by Beth Owens

Today, Edna McConnell Clark Foundation (EMCF) CEO Nancy Roob sent a letter unveiling Blue Meridian Partners, a new funding collaborative that will provide the largest-ever infusions of private capital to high-performance nonprofits serving children and youth.

Hamzah Latif, 44, received a nice holiday gift last week. Along with three other human-services workers, he won a Veronica Award, and its cash prize of $5,000, for his outstanding support of his clients and use of data to ensure his efforts lead to the intended outcomes. His score was the highest ever recorded…

Perhaps it’s cliche to start off a newsletter at this time of year by talking about gratitude. But in a world whose axis is tilted too far toward tragedy right now, we’re more than willing to risk being trite.

Last month, we shared our excitement about research into the “growth mindset” by the Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck. This month, we want to go a little deeper into the concept and show just how critical it is for inspiring and sustaining the journey toward high performance. Because busy leaders rarely click on links, here’s a quick synopsis of Dweck’s research.

A big, bright bulb just lit up over our heads. We’re convinced that this insight—courtesy of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck—is powerfully relevant for all of us who aspire to high performance.

Some things just can’t be measured. Like the loss we and so many others are feeling following the shockingly out-of-the-blue passing of the psychologist Dr. Ethan Schafer, 39, who contributed an outstanding essay to Leap of Reason. He contributed far more to children with dyslexia and other learning differences…

We recently read with interest “What Gets Measured Gets Done,” an SSIR blog post about the work of the New York State Health Foundation (NYSHealth) to improve outcomes for the state’s 1.8 million diabetes patients. We’ve long admired the foundation and its president, Jim Knickman, so it was no surprise to us that NYSHealth is good at…

Prompted by a brutal murder, a surprisingly uplifting message landed in our inboxes this month. Our colleague Patrick Germain, the Chief Strategy Officer for New York City’s Project Renewal, wrote to tell us that a client of his organization’s Bronx Boulevard homeless shelter abducted and then murdered…

Four years ago this week, we published Leap of Reason. Our initial print run was 10,000 copies—a wildly optimistic figure based, ironically enough, on faith rather than reason. Reason cautioned that only a tiny fraction of the million-plus books released every year reach the 5,000-copy threshold. In the blunt words of former Apple executive Guy Kawasaki, “In [a] sea of choices, why should anyone give a shiitake about your book?”

When the two of us get into heated debates, our views often divide along Ernie and Bert lines. The Ernie (not mentioning names) gazes at the data and sees a constellation of successes. The Bert (hint: his name sounds vaguely Italian) listens patiently but then screws up his face and emphasizes all the daunting challenges that remain.