IIT Bombay Golden Jubille Celebration - gnY-POINT

EXCLUSIVE: A CHAT WITH ELISABETH STOCK

ELISABETH STOCK is the President and Co-Founder of Computers for Youth (CFY) Recognized as an expert in improving the home learning environment of low-income families, Elisabeth has served as an advisor for both NYC Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Elisabeth also served as a White House Fellow (1996-97), where she was the principal architect of a program that enables Federal agencies to donate surplus computers to needy schools. Elisabeth holds four degrees from MIT and also served as a member of the MIT board of trustees.

Thanks to the efforts of the volunteer team, IIT BAA-GNY chapter has built a strong relationship with CFY. GNY chapter members have volunteered their time at numerous CFY events.

Why feature CFY here? The editorial team felt that CFY's mission is something that every IITian can relate to and would be inspired by—it is about education and it is about the effective use of technology to bring about social change. We were able to meet with Elisabeth Stock in her CFY office in midtown Manhattan. We believe that this is a story that is better heard from the one who built it all. Edited excerpts:

Elisabeth, thank you for taking the time out to meet with us. First, help us learn about the origins of CFY. What was the motivation behind the founding of CFY? How did CFY get started and how did it evolve?

Let me start with a bit of background and the many steps I took in my life that led me to CFY. I was an MIT undergraduate during the Reagan years. While most of my colleagues were getting jobs in the war industrial complex, building war-planes, etc., I was more interested in using my engineering knowledge to give back to the world. To give an example, for my undergraduate thesis in mechanical engineering, I designed and built a sit-ski for paraplegics. After graduating from MIT, I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana and was very taken by that experience. I wanted to stay abroad and wanted to continue to study what I had been seeing. I often wondered “why is Ghana poorer than the US despite having great natural resources like timber, cocoa and gold?” I ended up returning to MIT to study international development. That was followed by a two year stint at the World Bank. It was an amazing experience traveling extensively in Africa, but I couldn't really build community where I lived spending so much time abroad. I decided to turn my interest to issues facing the US and was fortunate to be selected to serve as a White House Fellow.

While in the federal government, I worked for President Clinton's and Vice President Al Gore's office. I got there right after the President signed an executive order allowing federal agencies to donate their surplus computers to schools. I built a program that let agencies use web to identify the neediest schools in their area, donate their computers directly to those schools, and efficiently track the donation. The program met all its operational goals but we were finding that the donated computers were not changing the learning environment in the classroom as we had hoped: either teachers were not trained, or the school couldn't find the resources to network the computers, or a multitude of other reasons. It occurred to me and my team that perhaps these computers could be best used to impact the home learning environment rather than the classroom. That was basically the origin of CFY.

What were the key things that you learned from your White House Experience?

I learned three things. First, our focus should not have been on improving the classroom environment: there were too many obstacles. The home learning environment, in comparison, was incredibly fertile ground and that's where we should have had our focus. The second was that you can't give schools or students a piece of the solution; it has to be comprehensive. If you donate a computer, there has to be tech support along with it, there has to be training and everything else. So with CFY, right from the beginning we made it our model to select an educational community, for instance all the 6th graders in a school, and make sure they get not just the computer hardware, but also the software, the tech support and training, and all the pieces that go with it. That was a big part of it.

Did you leave the White House after that? What did you end up doing after serving as a White House fellow?

I had grown up in the New York area, so I came back to New York to pursue my idea. But I did not have a network, so I decided to take a job with a non-profit to learn more about this sector. As I built a network in the area, I started approaching some other non-profits to see if they'd hire me to implement my idea. I kept getting told “no.” Each organization I approached told me they were more interested in implementing tech programs in schools – something I was not interested in based on my experience as a White house Fellow. Instead, I was determined to take advantage of the home learning environment using tech as the vehicle. Eventually, I ran into a colleague of mine who introduced me to Dan Dolgin, a corporate lawyer by trade, who had built the shell of Computers for Youth. Dan loved technology and deeply understood the difference a computer at home could make to a low-income family. Before I met him, Dan had incorporated Computers for Youth, had filed for 501c3 status, had assembled a board and had put some funds in an account, but not much else had been done. We met for lunch in a Vietnamese restaurant in Tribeca and at the end of the lunch he suggested we join forces. That was the beginning of CFY.

Were you apprehensive of anything before jumping on board with this?

No, I was very excited to do this. I was engaged to be married and I had a feeling that if I were to ever to start something, now was the time - before building a family. My parents and my husband were really supportive as well.

CFY is a national non-profit organization dedicated to improving the home learning environment of school children from low-income households. CFY is built on the belief that the home holds the greatest untapped potential for improving children's academic and life-long success. Compared to the classroom or the after-school center, the home has received the least attention from policy makers and educators. It is where children spend the greatest amount of time (only 13% is spent in the classroom) and where children interact with the adults most interested in their overall success—their parents/guardians. CFY partners with schools to improve the educational resources in students' home, enhance parent-child interaction around learning, and help teachers connect classroom learning with the home.  CFY has shown significant results in student math test scores and in increases in student class effort. In addition, more than 90% of participating parents say they feel more confident in helping their children learn. CFY reached its 10,000th family in June 2007. CFY operates in New York , Philadelphia , and Atlanta , and by 2010, plans to be operating in five cities and supporting affiliates nationwide. More information on Elisabeth Stock and CFY can be found at www.cfy.org

Do you think your White House network or the networks you developed in New York have been helpful in doing what you are doing?

The networks I had built before CFY were definitely helpful in getting CFY of the ground. But, believe it or not, I don't think I knew earlier how to use my networks most effectively. This is something I have gotten much better at over time. When I was first considering joining Dan and building CFY, I felt that between serving on the MIT Board of Trustees (where I was elected) and serving as a White House Fellow, it was like I was handed these powerful rolodexes. But I hadn't actively networked before, so I didn't exactly know how to utilize these relationships in terms of finding ways for people to help me and help CFY. It's a matter of developing skills; you have to learn to cultivate your network, ask for help, and enable people to be supportive.

I guess it would be safe to say that you took a path that most other MIT engineering graduates, or for that matter even IIT engineering graduates, would not have taken. Fundamentally, what was it that got you on this path? It appears like there was something deep in your heart that took you on this path.

I think you are right, but I don't think I can identify it. I guess it was my curiosity that led me to the Peace Corps and the rest of the steps I took in my career. When graduating from college, was it the opportunity to travel to exciting places that led me to Peace Corps? I don't think so. I was very interested in understanding how a very large proportion of the world's population was able to live on less than a dollar a day. I wanted to see what that feels like. Growing up in the United States and growing up in an upper- middle class family, it is very hard to broaden your outlook without leaving the comfort of your home. Peace Corps gave me a very good perspective about the world and what matters in life.

What was your experience building this organization? How do you find talented people and retain them? Is it more difficult to retain talented people in a non-profit as compared to for-profit?

It hasn't been that difficult to find and retain talented people so far. I think it may become more difficult as we move forward. I would say that non-profits and for-profits are more alike than they are dissimilar. It really has to do with the size of your organization. A small for-profit is more similar to a small non-profit than it is to a large for-profit. If you are in a small for-profit, it could be self-funded; you could have that “family feel” where you know everyone. It could feel very much like a small non-profit. In both sectors, when you grow to 15-20 people and hit that awkward stage, you have to start building more bureaucracy to make sure everyone is communicating efficiently. From the research that I have seen around human resources, compensation is not the number one driving force that motivates people to take a job, although it may play a prominent role if you are the bread-earner for your family. In terms of attracting talent, Dan and I have similar philosophies that you have to foster an environment where you avoid thinking that you and you alone, are the smartest person. In fact, every hire should be better than the hire before. Every person should be viewed as a key contributor building something together. You have to keep the work mission-driven and make sure people are acknowledged appropriately. It's all about respecting people. We keep making the work exciting and challenging, and that's how we have been able to retain talent. But, as we grow we will have more demand for specialized people and less demand for generalists. This will be one of the challenges that we have to focus on moving forward.

If you were not running CFY, what would you be doing?

I'd probably be home with my kids. Yes, that's probably what I would do. There's no other job right now that would interest me. There's something really amazing about working for yourself, and I'm not sure I would be interested in working for someone else right now.

You have had quite a bit of interaction with the IIT volunteers so far. What has your experience been like?

It's been extremely positive. You demonstrate a profound concern for people in need and we applaud your commitment to making a difference in the world. I think IIT volunteers “get” what CFY does on a really deep level and we appreciate that. In order to flourish, CFY needs four things: individual and corporate cash gifts, donations of computer equipment, tireless volunteers, and creative visibility. Over the years IITians have sought to connect us in all of these areas and we are grateful.

Are there any elements that make up the CFY model, that are applicable universally? For instance, if someone wants to implement this model in another geography, what are the 2 or 3 things they should keep in mind?

Yes, I definitely think that there are things that translate to any geography. We asked this question when we were thinking about first expansion site, Philadelphia. Would it work? Would it be the same? Would there need to be massive modifications? Of course, expanding internationally would require us to consider obvious changes, such as converting the instructional material into different languages as necessary, but for the most part our model will certainly translate. At CFY, we think that we have created a solid kernel and wherever we go we can work around this kernel.

Also, the trick for any leader is to figure out what to focus on and what to disregard. Picking a direction is not just about “OK, I am going in this direction,” it is also about figuring out all the things that you will not be doing because they are incongruent with our goals and not spending time on those things. I think we have figured out the issue of “focus” really well at CFY and we could certainly sit down and talk with someone starting something like this in another geography.

We have underpinnings for all the decisions we make, whether it's coming from the literature or from our experience of capturing and analyzing data. For example, we have learned that our program must be designed so that it is fair and will be perceived as such by our students and their families. What this means, in our case, is that we can't pick our kids one-by-one or pick a certain number of kids in a school. There's something inherently unfair about that. So we go to a school and offer all the sixth graders the ability to participate in our program.

Are you open to lending your brand, if people want to take it international?

Possibly, it's a question of when…not a question of yes or no. So the answer is yes, but it's a timing thing. Because, for us, it takes a certain amount of energy and “mindshare” to build a new aspect of our program. Right now, we don't have enough of that mindshare to focus on the question of CFY going international but I can definitely see that happening in the future. It ties in nicely with our efforts to build an affiliate network in the U.S. I don't think we would open an office ourselves in another country, but if someone else wants to raise money and start something in another country and become part of our affiliate network, that's exactly what we are hoping they will do when we are ready and have worked out the details.