From TV Journalism to Pentagon Briefings to Nonprofit Innovation in Education: Meet Kathleen deLaski
In honor of Women's History Month, we are proud to feature Kathleen deLaski. Kathleen deLaski founded the Education Design Lab after eight years on the Board of Virginia’s largest public university, George Mason. Kathleen just released her new book "Who Needs College Anymore?".
Kathleen will be speaking at the GlobalMindED conference in Denver, June 16-18.
Tell us about your journey.
Wow. My journey feels like it began so long ago. I was a child of the 60s who was lucky enough to have parents who treated me exactly like my two brothers. I wasn’t really aware that women didn’t have the same opportunities as men, so I always acted as if they did. I was also vaguely aware that I was in the first generation of women for whom more careers were opening up, and we started believing that we could “have it all.” In fact, because we were first, we felt we had to demonstrate that we could manage professional and family greatness in our child bearing years.
For me, becoming a TV journalist, the Pentagon spokesman and later a non-profit builder, were all expressions of a drive to prove women were worthy. And to earn the right to stay up there, we also had to show that we would not let our partners and children down. Now that my two kids are grown and live thousands of miles away I have done some of my most productive and brain bending work, starting the Education Design Lab and working with colleges around the country to design shorter pathways to career success.
What pivotal experiences shaped your current path?
I have to say my two children are the throughline of my life. And their struggles in middle school and high school in the pressure cooker environment of upper middle class America helped me to become the outsider to the higher education system that I needed to be in order to advocate for change.
They both suffered mental and physical health issues from being expected to sail through the gauntlet of high school and the college application process, where some friends were getting into top schools and the parents were proud. I have one child who went to college (after being asked to leave two different high schools) and one who took a different route. This formed some of my views about how the degree system doesn’t work for everyone. I also spent time throughout my journalism and non-profit career with families who are part of the majority of Americans who do not earn a four year degree, 62%.
Through that and the Lab’s work, we coined the phrase “new majority learners,” which is anyone for whom college was not originally designed. And I dedicated my book “Who Needs College Anymore?" to new majority learners. I became very passionate about helping colleges elevate and fund pathways to well-paying careers, when college tuition is mostly available to learners who are in a degree program full time.
What are the most valuable lessons you've learned about yourself through your life and career?
It’s only now, in the twilight of my career, that I realize I am happiest as a “creative.” It’s funny because I have always fought that self-label, but never really thought why. Now I can assess that I somehow devalued creative roles in the workforce as something women needed to aspire beyond, so I wanted to be a foreign correspondent or a nuclear policy specialist. But in my non creative fields, I found myself gravitating toward the “maker spaces.” I ended up covering nuclear policy as a journalist, making stories, or when I was at AOL, I made new consumer programming offerings.
When I got over to education reform, I was obsessed with the making of new non-profits in the space, which felt very creative. And now, I am writing a book, to make sense of the systems change that plays out like choreography in my head about the future of higher education.
What drives your desire to contribute and make a difference?
Two things really. First, I am so blessed to be part of a family of entrepreneurs who earned enough wealth through a software company to have a family foundation. As the managing director of the foundation and the founder of various non-profits, I feel like I can operate with an understanding of the needs of both stakeholders: practitioner and angel investor.
Secondly, I am motivated by what I mentioned above. As a “creative” I can’t stop myself from having an angle on how to fix things. I am a huge proponent of design thinking, and teach it at our local university. This methodology helps me break down problems and think about solutions from the standpoint of the end user’s needs. Call me wonky, but give me a whiteboard and a few other thinkers, and I’m happy.
If you could go back and advise your younger self, what would it be?
Have more children. I should have taken the leap, but I was so busy being “professional.” They are the joy of my older age, despite the physical distance between us. Thank goodness for texting. I don’t know how my mother coped when we were separated.
How can GlobalMindED support leaders like yourself in achieving your goals and advancing your aspirations?
I love that you create the space to step back from the specifics of our work and think about the big picture, the community, the connective tissue.
I notice women of my generation, who came up the ladder before the term “self-care” was invented, have trouble getting outside their own “to-do list” headspace. I call it ‘hypervigilance,” which makes it harder to be a good friend and mentor or even to have time to become a thinker. So thank you for slowing us down to do the work underneath the work.
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