239 Mentorship and Community Support so Every Young Person Can Attain Economic Mobility with Khari Brown, CEO at Spark The Journey | Greater Washington DC DMV Changemaker

***DISCLAIMER: Please note that the following AI-generated transcript may not be 100% accurate and could contain misspellings or errors.***

[00:00:00] Mahan Tavakoli: Curry Brown, welcome to Partnering Leadership. I am thrilled to have you in this conversation with me.

[00:00:05] Khari Brown: Thanks so much, Maha. It's great to be with

[00:00:07] Mahan Tavakoli: you, Curry. I've seen your leadership and your impact in the community. I've gotten a chance to see your energy, your enthusiasm for the work you do, and even the interactions we have had have been energizing for me, so I know they will be energizing for everyone who gets a chance to listen to some of your life story and background.

Would love to start out, Kari, first with whereabouts you grew up. And trying to understand the impact of your upbringing on you.

[00:00:42] Khari Brown: Great. I was born in the Boston area, actually born in Boston and grew up in the Boston area. In the early seventies. And I'm an only child to a black father and a white mother who were the best parents are the best parents, still married, I think 53 years of marriage or something.

Awesome. Grew up in the Boston suburbs, attended public schools. And I come from a family of educators I think that helped to shape, some of my values and what I thought I might do as an adult. But had a wonderful childhood and very grateful for, all the opportunities that I had in getting the start that I did.

[00:01:28] Mahan Tavakoli: KA as society is becoming more diverse and we are becoming more comfortable. dealing with people with different backgrounds. I imagine growing up in the 1970s with a black father and a white mother was more unusual than it would be today. What was that experience like for you?

[00:01:50] Khari Brown: Mahan at the time, I didn't have anything to compare it to. My awareness of race and difference, my own difference began when I was about five or six, I'd be out with my dad and recognize that, the reactions that we got, the looks, the comment I could tell, there were exchanges, with people that upset my dad that I didn't really understand.

And I think that, started to happen, around six. There were definite times and this, coupled with being an only child where I felt isolated, alone or that I didn't really have a group and I developed skills where I could flow in between everyone's group and yet never be fully, a member of anyone's group, if that makes sense.

That had some benefits too, and it's given me a worldview that I really appreciate now. But definitely some hard moments. Boston, there's a lot of racism still today, but particularly in,

. Again, I go back to what I said at the beginning. It was a wonderful childhood overall.

[00:03:09] Mahan Tavakoli: As you were going to school, what drew you to basketball and why did you get so excited and so involved with it?

[00:03:16] Khari Brown: I loved all sports as a kid. Basketball was my favorite. I'm tall. So I was always, one of the taller kids. I'm six five now. And so that helped, right? gave me an advantage there. But I just love the game. I love to compete. I love the team aspect of it. It was just the cultural aspect of it too.

I just love everything about the game. And it gave me, great mentors experiences and growth opportunities. My first leadership opportunities came through basketball, being a captain, and I would never be doing the things that I'm doing today had I not had some of those opportunities through basketball.

So it was

[00:04:00] Mahan Tavakoli: terrific. So it must have been devastating for you to be cut from your basketball team in ninth grade, and

[00:04:08] Khari Brown: how did you know that? Yeah. That was devastating. It was devastating. I cried. I was crushed, but I had a moment where I said,

is this gonna be it? Am I gonna give up? Am I gonna quit? And I had dreams of playing in the nba like lots of, naive kids. And I gonna have to figure something else out. And I decided, no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna work at it. I'm gonna prove them that they're wrong. And an opportunity to later in that season to get put back on the team.

And gradually worked my way, from the bench to, becoming one of the best players over time and with a lot of hard work and hitting a growth spur also helped .

[00:04:53] Mahan Tavakoli: That helps. But it's interesting because a lot of times setbacks in life make some people resentful other people better as a result of the setback.

They work even harder.

[00:05:05] Khari Brown: Yeah, I wasn't going to let that. Stop me. And what, I gained from that experience was, and at other times in my life as well, I'm gonna try something else. I think sports helps to teach you that you get knocked down a lot and once you know that you can get back up, it becomes a habit, right?

You just keep doing it. And, I tell people in basketball, you're great if you make half of your shots, right? , you're one of the best, so keep shooting. Cause the next one might go in, you gotta think the next one's gonna go in. So that was something that, my coaches helped to instill in me and that I've tried to pass along to others.

[00:05:49] Mahan Tavakoli: So Kari, I would love to get your thoughts on youth sports before we go on. One of the things you said is you played basketball and I know you continued with it, but before we get to that, I've been thinking about the fact that my girls love volleyball. One of 'em was able to make it to club volleyball.

One of 'em wasn't able to. But I think about the amount of investment some kids have, whether it's in volleyball or basketball. Yeah. By the time they are 10, 12, we're not talking about college level athletes. And I reflect on the fact that while I am sure there are people without that investment That's right.

Who are supremely gifted, that's right. To compete, we're missing, puts a lot of other kids at a disadvantage and would love to know some of your thoughts about that.

[00:06:36] Khari Brown: It's one of the areas where. Under investment and the income inequality that we have is reaching down, to children and taking away some of the best, I just talked about how all of these growth opportunities that I had, I might not have had those, had there not been coaches in my town and some of these things available that were not club sports.

So my kids are around the same age, yours, Mahan, and I see how this divide is happening around income lines. And, it makes me think that we've got , some of our priorities wrong, in thinking about monetizing youth sports. Youth sports can be one of the ways where, we're really investing in our young people.

There's so many life lessons to be gained. From sports and if we really wanna be competitive on a national, international stage, we can't just be, investing in the kids who have money, but we have to invest in all of the kids. So on a number of levels, it's disappointing what I'm seeing in sports as a parent and as someone who, spent a long time in a previous career working in youth sports.

[00:07:51] Mahan Tavakoli: One of the things that I'm hoping we would be able to think about and change is that the other thing this has done is that it has divided kids. among those socioeconomic lines that there are already those divisions anyway. Along neighborhoods and schools, sports, to a certain extent was bringing more kids together, right from across different socioeconomic backgrounds.

Now, even with respect to that, there are divisions Yeah. That I see. But you continued in basketball, you studied at Tufts. What then got you to go to Finland to play basketball and what was that experience like? Oh, it was

[00:08:35] Khari Brown: It was really fortunate. Someone on my team his father was the president of a club team in fin.

and that was my first job outta college to be a pro basketball player living just outside of Helsinki. And what experience that was I, fulfill a dream and play basketball for a living. It really helped me grow up. I spent a year on my own in a foreign country, where I didn't speak the language, I didn't have any other connections, and it forced me to toughen up a little bit.

And I definitely had some hard experiences during that time. Again, this is one of these moments where I think I was tested a little bit and being able to draw on some of these experiences where, I knew that giving up was not the answer, because there was a point at which I wanted to quit cause it was going I thought so badly and it ended up being, one of the best experiences of my life.

[00:09:32] Mahan Tavakoli: So what was that, Kari? What were some of the breaking points when you were in Finland?

[00:09:38] Khari Brown: I was dealing with some nagging injuries. I was lonely. What I didn't realize is that in December in Finland is pretty close to the Arctic Circle. It was getting light at nine 30 in the morning and dark at three 30 in the afternoon.

And I developed seasonal effective disorder, which I didn't even know had a name nobody diagnosed me, but I figured it out after the fact. I realized that I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself and being inside get out And be more active. My team helped me do that.

Connect me to opportunities to get involved in the community. I got involved doing a little bit of teaching and coaching and those became things that I knew that I wanted to pursue later. And developed some other strategies for the language barrier not rocket science, really just coming up with another approach and it ended up making all the difference.

[00:10:33] Mahan Tavakoli: Now, did you aspire to play in the finished leagues and then make it to the N B A or was the endpoint for you? ,

[00:10:43] Khari Brown: I knew that the NBA was probably not gonna come calling for me. I hope that I could have a longer European career or some career playing overseas. But that I got one year was, I'll take it.

[00:11:02] Mahan Tavakoli: As you said, it's a unique experience to live in a different country. Now Finland is a very homogeneous society. It is, yeah. How was fitting in Finland? What was that experience like for you?

[00:11:20] Khari Brown: They're quiet people which kind of fit sort of my New England, upbringing, folks might say Cold

The weather also resembled some of the worst of New England weather . But, there were a lot of things that I really came to appreciate about Finland. They were very patriotic. People they believed in national service, which was something that, every finished citizen even though they haven't, had a war since I think, been involved in any military, issues since World Wari when they were invaded by the Soviets.

But everyone goes through national service. And I think that engendered a communal aspect that, I don't see here in the us And I think part of that is enabled by their homogeneity, right? They all feel like they're in it for one another.

Cause, it could be their cousin or their nephew or whoever, and I think we don't have as much of that today, but I was really impressed with. The educational system and they were great people. They were great to me. A lot of that experience has come to shape some of my world.

[00:12:30] Mahan Tavakoli: So as that worldview was shaped you came back to the States and you got your master's. Just curious though, what sparked your interest in education and social justice work, which you've pretty much spent your entire career in cardiology. Yeah.

[00:12:47] Khari Brown: I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do when I came home and I was testing the waters in a few areas and one of those was coaching.

and I found that I really loved coaching. I did a little bit of coaching at the college level and then I coached basketball at the high school level and really loved working with those young men. And, I thought that I had found my calling. I thought that I would be a a high school history teacher and a basketball coach.

It was really working with some of our players off of the court that, helped me see the importance of education or helped me see myself being involved in education. I saw that, some of our players who were trying to qualify. To get a minimum score on the sat to qualify to play college basketball.

At that time, you needed a combined verbal math on the, and we had several players who, despite having good grades, could not break that score. And it just didn't make sense to me that these really hardworking intelligent young men who, could memorize the other team's plays that we were gonna play, next Tuesday were at about a fifth or sixth grade reading level in some cases.

And those two things just didn't align for me. And it just was, I thought unacceptable that we have, people who are so willing to learn and our education system was failing. , I thought that I could make a difference there. So that inspired me to go to graduate school and got me on the path that I've been on, for the last 25 years.

[00:14:36] Mahan Tavakoli: Now, that's a challenge Kari, that we've had for as long as I can remember, and a lot of people have talked about it, but not much has been done about it. Why do you think that is? Where in the school system we still have students in many instances, athletes, as you said, very intelligent, very capable, who are able to go on even graduate without being able to have some of the fundamentals of reading, writing, or math taken care of.

These are

[00:15:17] Khari Brown: big, systemic issues here behind that. I think it goes back to our priorities as a country. And we don't really have the investment in public education or even some basic services to create a level playing that will, enable young, let's be clear, it's black and brown.

Young people who are missing the most in terms of equal opportunities. Our education system is based upon taxes for our home values, that determine what school systems get and. We have young people who are starting out behind and this crosses all of the systems that touch our young people from health to housing to criminal justice, to education.

Just a significant lack of investment in our communities. Until we start to see these as being our universal problems it's going to be hard to deal with them at a system wide level, we don't talk about these things really. Even when you look at our election sites, these aren't the top topics in our election site,

and I just don't think that we have a collective investment as a nation to address these problems. So we do have. A very committed nonprofit sector. We have very committed, educators working in the public sector. But we're treating the symptoms in a lot of cases and not the causes.

[00:17:01] Mahan Tavakoli: It is interesting to me, as you were saying, we don't see it as a collective problem in that in many instances we even don't view it at the region, state or county level. We look at the school that our kids go to. That's right. How is that school performing? That's right.

Than caring more about the broader community and then the impact that this gap in education has. So how did you end up then becoming involved at what was then Capital Partners for Education?

[00:17:35] Khari Brown: When I was finishing my master's program, was looking for opportunities to serve in the nonprofit sector.

I was looking for mentoring organizations and came across capital partners for education, who was going through a leadership transition. And I was actually really more interested in a role of working, directly with young people and not a leadership role. The organization was so small that they had one position and that was for interim executive director.

And I agreed to accept an offer to be an interim executive director for four weeks, thinking that I would, get a little bit of experience and then. Move on and do something else. After four weeks, they renewed me for another four weeks, and that happened four times until finally I was named the permanent executive director at the beginning of 2002.

So this was happening beginning in September, 2001. I was the only employee there for a time and, gradually grew the organization. We're now, 22 years later and we're serving 10 times as many young adults and, we have 31 employees and more than 500 volunteers.

And, things have really taken off in recent years, but it's been a gradual process over many years. And in incredible journey for me that has just been, the experience of a lifetime.

[00:19:15] Mahan Tavakoli: It has been an incredible journey. And your incredible leadership growing the organization Kari, and growing its impact.

One of the things I love about organizations like the one you lead at what was called Capital Partners. Now we'll get to the rebranding, is the fact that growth is not just return to shareholders, it's return to people's lives and return to the community. And you've been able to do that. So if you were to reflect back and give advice to.

Whether young entrepreneurs, executive directors, and leaders wanting to grow their organization, what are the key factors in addition to your smarts and good looks, , what are the key factors that contributed to this very significant growth and impact?

[00:20:14] Khari Brown: It's funny, Mahan,

I didn't have the aspiration when I started to grow, and if I had, I would've done things differently, meaning I would've designed a more scalable model. So that would be my advice. If your goal is greater scale, you need to build with that in mind. We built an organization that was meant to be a small community based organization that was getting significant impact for a small number of young people.

And we decided, maybe in my eighth, ninth year and it was really, I who, came to this conclusion, but a lot of our supporters were saying, this is an amazing organization. It's only problem is that it's too small and you're working in an area where there's vast inequality, you should be more of a solution.

And that began to really resonate with me. We've still grown. I told you, 10 x and all of that, but we would be multiples larger had we. Really built the organization for scale. So if you really wanna scale think about your revenue model and, think about how you're gonna develop, all of your evaluation systems to be able to demonstrate, your impact and so that you can prepare to do it at scale.

[00:21:41] Mahan Tavakoli: That's one of the interesting things, Kari, over the years, I've been very involved in many entrepreneurial startups and angel capital and venture capital. And when companies look to raise funding for-profit ventures, yeah, they always have to have the hockey stick of their growth.

And impact. And I'm always curious why a lot of nonprofits don't have that same mindset, because if it is great work yeah. Then scale should be a part of that to impact more lives and more people. Yeah. Rather than being happy at a small level. So I think a lot of the ambition goes to the for-profit entrepreneurial startups.

Some of them make it, many of them don't. While the nonprofits in many instances are happy and incremental changes from year to year. Yeah.

[00:22:43] Khari Brown: I think that's very true. Mahan. And that was, true for me. I came, with a background in social sciences and it wasn't until a few years later that I, began taking MBA courses and things that.

Sharpened my skills in that way. But I began, with the community view and that view has just broadened over time. I think that's very common of the people who were drawn to the social sector which, is healthy, right? I think that these are the people who are most interested in serving.

Maybe the question we should be asking is, not how can we build larger nonprofits, but how can we get out of the business where we're relying on nonprofits to do things that our society should just have built in . That's the thing that I would like to see us get to.

[00:23:40] Mahan Tavakoli: You want to develop a system where there isn't a lot of breakage because in many instances the nonprofits are trying to fix a breakage, which is not as effective and costs a lot more money.

That's right. Than if we avoided that breakage in the first

[00:23:54] Khari Brown: place. That's right. Exactly. Right

[00:23:57] Mahan Tavakoli: Now throughout the years, you've also tested different things. Some have worked, some haven't worked in scaling. You tested an eMentoring software platform, and it sounds like that didn't work out. How come?

Because the concept of it makes great sense to me. Following on the conversation we just had, scaling the impact, not just being happy to reach and touch a few or even hundreds of people

[00:24:28] Khari Brown: we missed on, I think one or two important aspects of our analysis. And it ended up being a mistake that it took years to grow out of

And was another, learning opportunity for me as a leader to first undo the mistake, figuring out how can we adjust and, how do we communicate those adjustments to, all of the various stakeholders our community and then how can we get back to where we wanna be?

That process took time. And those were some important lessons. But again in leadership, and I say this to our team, We're all gonna make mistakes, , and I think my board understands that they've made mistakes in their businesses and in their lives. And, it's what you do after that is what matters.

[00:25:21] Mahan Tavakoli: I totally agree with that, Corey. And I think if anything, we need to speed up the. Pace of making some of those mistakes. Yeah. And when I talk about it, I categorize it in two different types of mistakes. Some are experimental mistakes, right? Meaning you have a hypothesis that something's going to work.

You go for it. And that hypothesis proves incorrect. It doesn't work. We need to scale those mistakes or have many more of those mistakes. Successful organizations do that. Some are mistakes of execution, , where things aren't done well, we need to minimize those types of mistakes. Sure. So I'm glad to hear that your board has been supportive of you experimenting and seeing what can help the organization scale some work, some don't, and those are lessons that are learned.

Would love to know as we're talking about this, what is it that Capital Partners does for these students? What are the services that are provided?

[00:26:32] Khari Brown: Yeah, and this would be a good time to note too that we alluded to this, we rebranded in July after years capital Partners for Education, rebranded to Spark the Journey.

So that's our new name, which we love. We have always been an organization that is committed to black and brown young people in the D M V. And we've supported them by mentoring and with some educational support so that they can have economic mobility in their lives as adults.

In our early years, we did that through scholarships to enable our students to go to private high schools and provided mentoring. The mentoring aspect was something to much scale. Scholarships was scale, began focusing more on students who attend public and charter schools and gonna college and now in workforce programs.

The thing that we do best Mahan is that we pair our students with mentors, adults who care about them. We surround them with a support system that helps them persist in school and at important transition points that are really vital for success. So think about the transition from the eighth grade to the ninth grade, the transition from the 12th grade into what am I going to do next if I'm going to college.

And I'm the first person in my family to go to college. I need some extra support to be able to navigate that process. There's some technical things there, are some just coaching things that young people need encouragement and, helping them persist.

We do that with young adults at a variety of transition points, but helping them persist and prepare for economic mobility that's the thing that we do best. And we're really proud of the success of our students. Over the years. They've graduated about three times the rate from college as many of their peers around the country.

And we have many who. Come back and become mentors and donors, board members people starting their own nonprofits contributing in many ways. And, we just are trying to get more and more young people and expand our reach today.

[00:29:04] Mahan Tavakoli: KA I would love to understand it better.

And also couple of concerns that I've typically heard from people one understanding it better. Is it that the same individual mentors a student through this journey, a young person through this journey, are there different people that mentor them? How does that process work?

[00:29:28] Khari Brown: It can be either Mahan,

I think the typical experience for students who are in one of our programs that is a multi-year experience, which most of our programs historically have been about a four year time period where the young person is enrolled. And in those cases, they're usually getting more than one mentor.

So we ask our volunteers to make a one year commitment if they're successful, if the match is successful, many of those end up doing another year. And we've had many mentoring relationships that have lasted beyond the official time in the program. And, they're 15 years later are, almost like extended family members.

[00:30:11] Mahan Tavakoli: It's great that a program like this can add value to the lives of the students that get involved with it. But there is selection bias in that the students that raise their hands or are willing to participate are already the ones who will be more likely to make it through the different hurdles.

And the ones that need it the most are the ones that are not going to volunteer and are not going to participate in the program. How do you address that? Yeah,

[00:30:43] Khari Brown: I think that's an important question. One that we have thought a lot about over the years, I would say in our early years that we were identifying exactly those people that you mentioned, they were the high flyers,

the ones who raise their hands or the ones who are picked first because they stand out. And it's important to be able to provide resources and extra support for those because we need high achievers and they end up often being the only, black or brown person in their classes and as they go on in many of the rooms that they go into.

So we were proud to do that. We still do some of that, but most of what we do now is looking to identify those who would not otherwise get any sort of extra support. We focus on a group that we call the academic middle. Some people call them the forgotten middle. GPA wise, they're at the peak of the bell curve, and. In our lower income communities, there aren't a lot of resources for these young people. Their counselors are generally, teachers are focused on those people who raise their hands or those people who need remedial support, behavior issues, and if my players 25 years ago are quiet, polite, not causing a stir.

You can fly by under the radar in a public school system. And our society misses the contributions of those folks. We need to do more to get them involved. So that's where we really see, our focus being. And lemme tell you, Moham, that's the bulk of black and brown youth.

In the Washington, DC area. Those are the ones who need more support.

[00:32:34] Mahan Tavakoli: I love hearing that, Kari, because it's something that is needed. I've been familiar with couple of nonprofits that in part because of the funding and because of the measures associated with the funding, have played those games where the funders look for a hundred percent of the people, for example, to make it on to college.

Yeah. So if the funders look for that, you're going to look for the students. Yes, sure. They can benefit from some of the guidance and support, but the ones who are most like. to then go on to college because that's what the funders are looking at. Yeah. I'm a big advocate for measures by all means, believe me.

But measures that matter, and sometimes I found with nonprofits that are meant to help the community, they get in a cycle in part because of the funders That's right their measures are real, but they know how to massage the front end to make sure they meet the measures at the back end.

[00:33:40] Khari Brown: I think Mahan, you're touching on one of the shortcomings of the nonprofit sector is, our reliance on funders and their priorities. And I always say no money, no mission. So I understand why. Many take that approach. I don't begrudge them necessarily for focusing on those.

I think those are worthy people. Again, I think we should be looking at our system and singing, is this the best that we can do as a society, does this really align with what we say that our values are? In a lot of cases it seems like the nonprofit sort of built in as a component of our broken sort of capitalist structure today.

Where more value going to, you talked about shareholder value, right? If that is the main goal of our society when it comes to business, at least the nonprofit sector is gonna feel some of that as well.

[00:34:50] Mahan Tavakoli: I like the way you express it Kari. And it brings to mind one of my favorite proverbs.

It's a proverb slash story of African origin about kids falling in a stream and two people saving the kids at the bottom of the stream. Then all of a sudden, one of 'em starts leaving. The other one says, why the heck are you leaving? Says, go upstream and find out who's pushing these kids in the stream.

That's right. Yes, it's outstanding to save the kids downstream. That's right, to help them, and it's necessary for us to do that. However, we cannot keep from asking what is it upstream that is getting these kids or throwing them into the stream in the first place. So I appreciate you thinking about that.

are there things that the listeners of the podcast, whether people in business or in government or nonprofit can do more upstream? Yeah. Downstream, they can support organizations like yours, but what needs to happen upstream to reduce the number of kids that need to be saved?

[00:36:00] Khari Brown: Yeah. Mahad, you're asking the right question here, and I think this is a question that isn't posed to folks like me enough,

or maybe isn't posed, to our leaders in general enough. And I think, of the three groups that you talked about it's the business community. The government will do what the business community sets as the priorities. And the nonprofit community will make do with whatever resources that we have, but we live in a element of scarcity,

driven by the whims of business who are the donors for the most part. We mentioned shareholders and, I would love for the business community to think more broadly about their responsibilities and leadership position when it comes to the communities , that they're in.

And thinking about, the whole of the communities and not just the shareholder values. So that would be where I think the starting point.

[00:37:13] Mahan Tavakoli: That's a great starting point. It is a hard one on a lot of different levels, Kari. We celebrate, the funds contributed, we don't celebrate the investment that is made ahead of time or whatever it has done ahead of time, that has reduced the need for funds to be contributed.

It's a little bit like talking about the many pandemics that people say had been prevented in the past. No one celebrates the fact that whether it was Ebola or whatever else, that it was prevented from spreading after Covid spreads or whatever else. Everyone's oh my God, how do we deal with pandemics?

So it is an important conversation for us to have, but I appreciate your understanding and awareness of the need to both address. at the here and now, which is really important for us to do, and to continually have conversations in the community with the businesses about that upstream element of it. Now, one of the great honors of life Kari is to be recognized for the great work that one has done by others.

You've gotten a lot of recognition, including receiving John Thompson legacy of a Dream Award. What is that award that you received in 2022 this was one of the greatest honors that I've received in my career, in part because of the specific meaning of the people, For whom the award was named.

[00:38:47] Khari Brown: So John Thompson Jr. Hopefully most people know, was the legendary basketball coach in Georgetown for about 25 years throughout the seventies, eighties and nineties. And the university named the award after him to honor one person in the community who, is doing a lot locally to, give back leading a nonprofit organization.

So I got that honor in 2022. It was special to me because I grew up really admiring John Thompson. Also the Honor was bestowed upon me on Martin Luther King's birthday. It's called The Legacy of a Dream. And the presentation was always on Martin Luther King Day.

Two of my heroes that connection was just a great highlight for me. And I was really grateful to Georgetown

[00:39:36] Mahan Tavakoli: forward. It is recognizing another hero in our community. And that's you Curry. So I'm really happy that you received that recognition for the silent work you've done over the years in the community.

 I talk a lot about leadership and there are a lot of what I call selfie leaders, Curry. Yeah. People who are at the center of every image. And now with selfies, that's pretty easy to do. Sure. But the mindset, the communication, everything is about them. So it's great to see leaders that make a difference in the community who are not selfie leaders.

They're the ones that deserve to be recognized.

[00:40:14] Khari Brown: I'm one of those leaders who I'm not a self-promoter by nature. So I think as a result even throughout 20 years of leadership there are many people who I meet and say, how come I never heard of, the work that you're doing before

And we're trying to change that now, as I've mentioned that we're more ambitious. I think my role is expanding in that range

[00:40:34] Mahan Tavakoli: is terrific and it's a hard balance cur I, do admit the fact that there has to be an element where you have to be a face to promote the cause to bring people to it to make a difference, and at the same time, not step over the line and make

[00:40:52] Khari Brown: it all about you, . No, it's certainly not about me. It's about. Important people, in our community who aren't getting the resources and support that they deserve. And, we're trying to do something about that.

And it just so happens that I get a lot of the attention for it. But we deploy, hundreds of volunteers every year, and we've got an amazing team who's doing the work every day. I'm the cheerleader for everyone. .

[00:41:21] Mahan Tavakoli: As this cheerleader, you've been doing this for almost 30 years now or Capital Partners was That's right.

Doing it for almost 30 years. Why after 29 years decide to rebrand, as you mentioned earlier, and change the name?

[00:41:41] Khari Brown: Listen, three decades is a long time, right? . So we evolved a lot. I think our program model, I could name probably five distinct, what I call pivot points, where we made adaptations to our model.

We're a different organization than we are, and we didn't think that our name really reflected who we are today and who we wanna be in the future. There was some confusion also, people thinking that we were in private equity or some type of financial services with the capital partners, you have more capital than you know what to do with

And so we got, plenty of questions about that. So it was time. We just, launched a new strategic plan where we're doing. More work mentoring young people who are preparing for the workforce and thought it was an opportune time to also finally rebrand. So we're excited about being sparked the journey and, to us that means, our organization can ignite, future opportunities.

But our young people really chart their own pathways to economic mobility. We just wanna give them that support and guidance so that they can fund their path on their own.

[00:43:00] Mahan Tavakoli: I love that you serve as an igniter and as a catalyst. That's right. They are the ones that are on the journey and they're the ones that make it happen for themselves.

You support that. I love the way you think about it, and I'm sure the rebranding becomes supportive of the strategic plan that you have, which is an important piece of this. Now, you go through all of this and then you decide to take a four month sabbatical career. . Yeah.

[00:43:29] Khari Brown: It was time. It was time. I had 20, 21 years with no more than three weeks off at any given time, even, my kids were born and. The pandemic really quite frankly took its toll on me. I was ready. I needed a break. I'm grateful that my board was really supportive of me and offered the sabbatical.

 Boy was it an amazing experience. It , was the refresher that I needed. It gave me, perspective. It gave me the opportunity to just recharge. I spent time, visiting with family and friends and a lot of, rest and relaxation on my own at home and, came back more motivated than ever with a real appreciation for the experience, the opportunity.

And I become a bit of a,, Advocate proselytizing for sabbaticals. I think that too many of my peers in the nonprofit sector are burning out. And don't feel that we have the license to raise our hands to, take that time And, we're building in a sabbatical policy at Spark the Journey something I believe in.

So I'm, it was great for me and I hope others, can get the opportunity to do it as well.

[00:44:51] Mahan Tavakoli: I'm happy to hear that Kari. I work with a lot of senior executives in business and summit nonprofit, and I don't think I have seen this level of pressure emotional health issues. Yeah.

Yeah. And anxiety in my career. Yeah. Most especially for many of the nonprofit executives of color. Yeah. It's been a rough couple of years late, on top of what had been a typically hard role anyway. So good for you for seeking it, good for your board, for supporting it, and I have no doubt.

your thinking is more fresh and energized. So you have an experienced person with the energy an excitement of a new person. Yeah. Leading sparked the journey rather than either a burned out person or a new person without any understanding

[00:45:51] Khari Brown: and experience. And it also gave, other leaders on my team opportunities to grow.

 Also, it's a healthy business practice, not just for the nonprofit sector, but I would say, everywhere if you chief executives steps aside, the show has to go on, people are going to figure out how to make things work. And in our case, it led to some better practices.

So when I returned, it was not about what. Things, that you were doing. Can I pick back up? That's okay, you've got it . I have more time now to focus on higher order things that are gonna move the needle farther and faster for the young people that we support.

[00:46:34] Mahan Tavakoli: So Kari, you are back energized, new strategic plan if we talk with each other five years from now, and yeah, we're going to see each other before then and yeah. But if we talk five years from now and you have really been able to scale the impact further and have achieve the strategic plan and done more with Spark the journey, what will be different?

What will spark the journey be like five years from now?

[00:47:04] Khari Brown: Mahan, I don't have a crystal ball , but I can tell you that we are doing some things in working with partners that I think can lead to some real breakthroughs and growth for us. I co-founded a collaborative called The Talent for Tomorrow Alliance.

It's a group of five nonprofit organizations who are doing either college success or workforce development work with a similar population of young adults. And we're collaborating and tooling our resources to get better outcomes and be more efficient in doing it. I think, we can grow a lot faster that way.

 I am also working on partnerships with, local governments and businesses. So what I would like to see five years from now is growth in multiples of the reach that we have today being able to reach a much larger share of the young adults in our community.

And if we're successful with that, we have the ear of leaders in the community. I think we also need to be thinking about how we can change some of the practices that affect our young people practices in. K12 practices in higher ed practices in the way we train our young people for entry level to the workforce and giving the business community more opportunities to make some adaptations as well.

[00:48:47] Mahan Tavakoli: I appreciate your leadership toward that. These are complex problems and they don't have easy answers and easy solutions, but it is important for all of us to be at the table engaged, understanding that it is up to all of us to. The issues, it is not acceptable to let it go on as is, right?

We can, and we will have the opportunities to do that, and I look forward to your leadership as you're doing that. Now on another hand, you are also a proud father of two kids. That's right. It's been married to your wife 18 or so years now, as a father of two kids, what are your aspirations for their education, their growth, and the future that they will inherit from you, Kari?

[00:49:41] Khari Brown: That's a great question behind I am so fortunate to have two amazing kids. They're 14 and 12. They attend DC public schools. They have, their whole lives so far. And I want them to have all of the opportunities that I had and more I think they already have more exposure to things that I didn't, maybe better or worse, the internet

And, to really chart their own pathways, much like I said for the young people in sparked the journey. I think what was great about my parents' approach to education was that they, left it to me to find what inspired me. And I think when my kids find that inspiration, they will latch onto something and really pour themselves into it much in the way that I did.

But it's not for me to decide what those things are, right. . So I wanna provide a well-rounded education to them. And I think we're up to a good start.

[00:50:46] Mahan Tavakoli: I have no doubt they have a great role model in Yukari. So that's outstanding to hear. I do have to say also, as an aside on the education front of it for the podcast, I'm interviewing some leading thinkers on artificial intelligence and ongoing impact. And one of the interesting things is sometimes people are scared about artificial intelligence taking people's jobs. It will displace some jobs. Yeah. But the more concerning factor that many of the AI experts that I talked to talk about is that it is going to magnify the differences even more.

 It's not that it's necessarily going to take away Yeah. Jobs, however, , the people who are capable and have access will be able to do even more. Yeah. It's going scale those differences.

[00:51:48] Khari Brown: That's pretty consistent way. Technology has changed things over generation.

, was it a generation or two ago where, there was a manufacturing sector and that, provided stability for many families And now that, that, that's gone. I think technology is a big part of that. I can see that trend continuing. I guess the question is,

Okay, what are we gonna do about it?

[00:52:15] Mahan Tavakoli: Exactly. And that's why we need to have the right people at the table talking about it, because we can do things about it upstream. Now on the fun side of it, Kari, you've had a lot of unique experiences in life, but there is one that I think most people would be jealous when they hear of, and that's, you got a chance to play basketball with President Obama at Camp David.

Yeah. What was that experience like, har

[00:52:47] Khari Brown: Oh, that was in my top five, experiences in life.

Births and weddings and those things. I was a big Barack Obama fan and when I put out that, we had biographical things in common and then basketball player, playing in a game that, some of my friends were playing in, that was on the bucket list, . Being able to play that day was just really an experience of a lifetime.

Never forget it and something to tell the grandkids about.

[00:53:23] Mahan Tavakoli: You have to dish the details .

[00:53:28] Khari Brown: I think we won the games for the day. My team, president was on the other team. The president was very effective in trash talking and he got all the calls his way. No one argued the calls against him. And at the end of it we went, back to DC and he got on a helicopter solved some of the world's problems, it was an amazing amazing day. , one that I'll never forget.

[00:53:58] Mahan Tavakoli: I bet it's even fun hearing about it, let alone experiencing it and recounting it. Kari. Now Kari you have been an outstanding leader of your organization sparked the journey, have been recognized with awards, including John Thompson's legacy of a Dream Award.

You're still a young man. I'm sure you're going to get many more awards and do many more great things, which is more important than the awards that you get for the great things that you've done. When you reflect on leadership, how do you work on improving your leadership? And are there leadership resources you typically count on and refer to others?

[00:54:38] Khari Brown: Those are important questions, and I've been, really fortunate to have. People who've invested in me. So I've been able to participate in, I could probably name, more than 10 leadership programs that I've participated in leadership Washington One, that I know that we share, but many others over the years.

And those have been, intentional investments both on my part, but also from my board. So that I think is important, finding those resources and boards and leaders need to make sure that their leadership teams are getting those trainings, those opportunities. You not only learn a lot from the instructors in those situations, but from your peers.

Another part is surrounding myself with an unofficial advisory group of people, , who are always there for me to bounce questions off of to learn from observing what others, the people who I look up to do.

And then, to remain curious and to be a student. One of the, I think most important values that I picked up throughout my education was the importance of being a lifelong learner. And that's something I wanna instill in everyone, my own children, to all of the young people that that we reach is that's one of the greatest gifts of education, being a lifelong learner. That means that. We as leaders can research and learn and think about where do we need to grow what is AI going to do, not this year, but in three years, how can I be thinking about that? And leaders always need to be asking those questions.

And, that's something that I devote time to every.

[00:56:34] Mahan Tavakoli: I totally agree with you that it is important for us to have that learning mindset and growth mindset even more so as a pace of change picks up and becomes even faster at a conversation. A couple of years back with

jim Dyke, I called him Mr. Chairman because he was chairman of a lot of organizations that I was involved with, and he had been Secretary of Education in Virginia. Jim talked about his passion for education. And the worst thing you could do during the period of slavery was to try to.

A slave because the slave owners felt education was the most threatening thing that you could give to another human being. That's right. So we have that opportunity now. It is up to all of us to educate and do exactly what you said, Kari, address the issues as we have them right now.

Those people in the stream and together move on up in the stream and make sure fewer people fall into that stream. I really appreciate you, Kari Brown, your leadership and you taking the time to share some of your background, upbringing, and leadership lessons with the partnering leadership community.

Thank you so much, Kari.

[00:57:56] Khari Brown: Mahan, it's been wonderful talking to you. Thanks so much for having me on. Really enjoying our conversation today.