It’s hard to know what to do after high school. We’re often pushed to make huge life decisions at the young age of 17 or 18. We’re told to go to college or get a job, and to start “adulting.” But how often are we encouraged to pause and reflect on some really important questions: who am I, what are my passions, what brings me joy, how can I make an impact?

In 2017, I was in the same spot so many current high schoolers are in — asking those big questions and wondering what my next step should be. I decided taking a gap year made sense for me. And I’m eternally grateful I made that decision. It made me feel so reengaged, energized, and eager to learn that I decided to head to college after my gap year in Senegal. But in 2020, as we all know, the pandemic hit.

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Pandemic impact

While it was tough to finish college during the COVID-19 pandemic, I feel grateful that I had a stable home environment in which to finish my education and that I was deeply passionate about what I was learning. Unfortunately, a lot of high school students can’t say the same. Data from 2021 show that 37.1% of high school students reported poor mental health during the pandemic, and from my conversations with educators, being back in person hasn’t done much to change this. In fact, 87% of public schools reported that the pandemic has negatively impacted student social-emotional development during the 2021-2022 school year.

One NC educator I recently spoke to said that she doesn’t know how to get her students to care. When she asked them to complete an activity about what they want to do post-high school, only 7 people in the whole class had an answer to that question.

I don’t believe there’s one quick fix for this. But I do know that burnout and feeling aimless isn’t unique to current high schoolers impacted by COVID-19. This was one of the main reasons I decided to take a gap year in the first place. And while I don’t believe students should take gap years to run from anything, if they want to run toward a feeling of purpose, of passion, of self-discovery, of feeling alive again, then there are programs to get them there.

Gap year option

Global Citizen Year’s (GYC) Take Action Lab is one of those programs. Take Action Lab is a 4-month immersion program in Cape Town, South Africa for students worldwide, ages 17 to 21, post-high school. Students live with their global cohort and apprentice with local human rights organizations. They learn about themselves, each other, South Africa, and how to make an impact.

Impact is at the core of every program GCY designs and runs — and has been since its founding over a decade ago. Its 2,000 alumni come from around the world. GCY has had students from over 60 countries, 51% of whom were from low-income backgrounds. Additionally, 46% identify as students of color and 80% received some form of financial aid.

These impacts and others are key as high schoolers are making their own paths and those paths are changing in recent years. According to a recent study, just 46% of high schoolers definitely plan on attending college, and graduates are significantly more likely to consider mental health and financial stability as top priorities over a college degree.

Gen Z dread (and hope)

Who can blame members of Gen Z for rethinking college? In the United States since 2000, tuition and fees at private universities have increased by 134%, out-of-state tuition and fees have increased by 141%, and in-state tuition and fees have increased by 175%. There’s even a term for what Gen Z is experiencing: “Gen Z dread.” Gen Z dread comes from a state of constant anxiety about what their future holds — what to do after school, job prospect concerns, cost of living, the devastating impacts of climate change, the list goes on and on.

But dread doesn’t have to be the only thing that Gen-Z experiences. I think Desmond Tutu said it best, “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” Working at GCY, where I get to read the applications of young people from around the world who want to participate in a program like Take Action Lab, is inspiring. They all have so much hope for the future, ideas for how they want to impact their own communities, and drive to make change. And being around people with that level of optimism is contagious.

To learn more about Take Action Lab, visit our website. Educator’s can also nominate students and GCY will reach out to them with more information. The opportunity for graduating students to re-engage, make an impact, find their passions, their people, and their purpose is out there.

The post Gen Z’s priorities are changing — are gap years the new path? appeared first on Global Citizen Year.

The following is a conversation between Erin Lewellen, CEO of Global Citizen Year, and Denver Frederick, the Host of The Business of Giving.

Read or Listen on Denver-Frederick.com/

Denver: One of the most innovative and forward-thinking nonprofit organizations to come into existence over the past 15 years is Global Citizen Year. It’s also an organization that is continually reinventing itself in response to our changing world. And here to discuss that with us is Erin Lewellen, the CEO of Global Citizen Year.

Welcome to The Business of Giving, Erin.

Erin: Thank you so much, Denver. I’m so excited to be here.

Denver: For those listeners, Erin, who are hearing the name Global Citizen Year for the very first time, tell us about the organization and how it got started.

Erin: Yes. Global Citizen Year started with the idea that a global experience at a formative age, on the cusp of adulthood, could absolutely shift the trajectory of a young person, the perspectives of a young person, and the ability to think about solutions to our biggest challenges through a global perspective that can actually land lasting solutions to some of the challenges that we face today.

Denver: Let me ask you a little bit about a gap year, because I think when the organization was first formed, we were talking about a gap year. You might call it a bridge year, but it was kind of fixed in my mind, Erin. It was a year between high school and college and kind of finding yourself and doing some different things.

But I’ve got to tell you, everything has been disrupted so much with this pandemic, all our structures and all our fixed notions of both education and of work. How do you kind of look at it now in terms of where a young person is in that period of their life?

Erin: Yes. We were founded on this idea that we should really maximize transitions, and an excellent transition to maximize the learning  is from high school to college.

And we still believe in the power of transitions and taking time to really explore something different, something new… have a deep transformational experience before you start on a new life stage. And at the same time, in the pandemic, what we recognized is that we don’t have to so narrowly define what that transition looks like.

If we think about the cusp of adulthood, from the time a young person graduates from high school through those beginning years– whether they’ve started college, whether they haven’t started college yet– that time of a young person’s life is just ripe for some sort of experience that grounds them in who they are and what they want to do in the world.  Gives them a sense of agency and a sense of purpose. That’s where, I think, when we think about the idea of a gap year, we can also think about the idea of this transition to adulthood.

Denver: Yeah. I love this concept of transitions. We don’t talk about it enough. I worked with the United Way a number of years ago, and they put their entire effort around transitions, early grade to middle, middle to high, college to work, and things of that sort.

What is so tricky about those transitions? Where do people sometimes stumble? And what is the key to make those transitions in a young person’s life successful?

Erin: That’s so smart that the United Way focuses on that because I think that… what we have found is the moment of transition is often an opening in the way you’re going to think about something and the way you might approach something differently. And we talk a lot at Global Citizen Year about being in your stretch zone.

And sometimes when we go from one life stage to another and we don’t take the time to reflect and sit in that transition, we don’t put ourselves in our stretch zone. And we believe that there’s a comfort zone, there’s a stretch zone, and there’s a panic zone. And the most learning happens in the stretch zone.

And our job as folks who are either in transition or helping young people transition is to help them get to their stretch zone, because that’s where the learning is maximized. And it’s also where it becomes more embodied rather than just academic.

Denver: In this gap year concept, and right from your very beginning, Erin, Global Citizen Year has some extraordinary partners with the top colleges in this country. Tell us a little bit about those partnerships.

Erin: I would love to. I would start with an example. We worked with Tufts University for a number of years. And when we worked with them, it was all about how they could bring more young people to their campus who arrive with a perspective that is fundamentally different than their peers.

They’re in classrooms offering global perspectives, asking questions around how this relates to communities across the globe. How are their challenges similar and different than ours? How do the solutions need to be nuanced and different in different cultures?

That type of richness that a young person who’s had a global experience, like what we offer, can offer in the classroom, is something that colleges are seeking. They want those young people in their classrooms and on their campuses. And so Tufts is just an example, but we’ve got a growing list of university partners who are seeing the value in having young people like this on their campus.

Denver: Yeah. I mean, just for me, even if I just took a pause for a year and didn’t do anything, it would’ve been good. You get on such a conveyor belt between high school and college, you don’t even think. You just do. And this pause is an exceptional one, really can change the trajectory of an individual’s life and society at large.

Well, the organization made quite a pivot in the way you deliver your programs during the pandemic, as well as for whom. Walk us through that, Erin.

Erin: Definitely. You can imagine, for the first 10 years, we served young people in a deep, global, immersive experience, and the pandemic hit; everything changed. We launched a completely new offering, and that was a game changer for us. It taught us so much.

We launched an online version of our curriculum. And what I think that offered us is it showed us that the type of impact we create can happen through different means. We were, I would say, healthily skeptical that a virtual offering could be truly impactful, so we partnered with the team at Harvard to measure it, and we absolutely stand corrected.

It opened up our thinking in really bold ways. For one, demonstrated the power of serving a truly global group of young people. We, in the academy, in our virtual offering during the pandemic, we served young people from a hundred different countries. And the…

Denver: Oh my goodness!

Erin: Yeah, the power of that diversity in the learning is absolutely unmatched. I mean, it really showed us what’s possible.

And then back to your question earlier, it really demonstrated that this year between high school and college is different across cultures. It really taught us that focusing on a developmental stage is key to maximizing the learning. And when a young person is ready for this and they’re in that cusp of adulthood, that’s the time that’s truly creating access to our opportunity.

And then I would say lastly, there’s two big things that we learned from our pivot to virtual that we’ve taken forward, which is how we develop our programming. So the first thing I’ll talk about is that we now have a global team developing our curriculum, and this is critical because it helps ensure a global perspective is infused in our approach.

And then the second is that we asked young people and their parents what they need and want coming out of the pandemic. And the coupling of the youth voice and the global program design team, that is where the magic can really happen in creating something very special.

Denver: Yeah. That’s really cool. And I’m guessing, you probably were able to serve a lot more people through this hybrid approach than you did traditionally through the in-person?

Erin: Oh, yes. We served a thousand in our first 10 years through our global immersive fellowship, which was an absolutely transformational experience for young people. And in the two years of our virtual offering, we served over 1,500 young people.

Denver: Oh, wow!

Erin: Yeah, it was very different. Very different.

Denver: Yeah. If there was a universal lesson you could take away and share with listeners about going hybrid or virtual or remote, the way you did, made that pivot, what would be the cautionary note, the word of advice you would like to give them?

Erin: I think it would be to always be listening and learning, and a willingness to truly listen. I can’t articulate that enough. What are the young people telling you? What is the impact you’re having? And I think, for us, it was really looking at those two things and saying: Okay, we need to shed some things because they’re not creating the impact, even though we might love those things.

Denver: Yeah. Yeah. That’s hard to do.

Erin: Those… we need to shed those, and we need to focus on what’s truly creating the impact and what young people are telling us that they find most useful and meaningful.

Denver: Shedding things is so difficult for organizations. I sometimes go to them and I say: start, stop, and continue, and I get tons of starts and tons of continues and I get no stops, and it really is hard to stop.

I think the point you make about listening is really good because generally when people are talking to us like this, we listen for about the first 15 to 25 seconds and we think we got it. You know what I mean? You can stop, I got the answer. No need to go on. And it’s usually that continuation of listening to really find out where the gold is going to be, but we stop and want to respond. It’s just the way we are.

You have a lot of programs, but I’ve got to tell you one that has got me more excited than any other, and that would be the Take Action Lab. Tell me about it.

Erin: Oh, I’m so excited about this, too. I’m very happy you’re asking me about it. It is our latest innovation, and it’s our hybrid model, and it incorporates all the learning we just talked about. So we have selected a global group of young people for a transformational immersion experience, and we’re starting in Cape Town with plans to add new locations soon.

We are building a worldwide group of young people who will meet in Cape Town, apprentice in one of our 30 partner organizations… learning from leaders, tackling issues related to human rights.

And our curriculum provides a scaffolding to their experience, helping them better understand themselves, how to be in community with folks who are coming from very different backgrounds than their own, and how to see the interrelatedness of our current global challenges. They’re so hungry for it, and our world is desperate for it, and we are really excited. We’re in the week 4 of the program.

Denver: Fantastic. Let me ask you about the heart of your program, which is Gen Z. And they’re, after all,  your customers, and they’re all of our futures, you know?

Erin: Definitely.

Denver: And I never want to try to generalize about a cohort, about a generation along those lines, but are there some things that you can sort of give us guidance on as to what really makes them tick?

Erin: Yes. I find this generation to be absolutely inspirational. And there’s some fundamental pieces that are important to understand and that I’m continuing to understand, so I don’t pretend to be an expert here. But they’re coming of age during challenges that are testing the world at new levels. We have COVID, climate change… all of its impacts, social media, of which the implications are still being understood.

And they have more information at their fingertips than any previous generation. They grew up with this constant influx of information. And that’s actually all they know. I think the challenges of the world, particularly the pandemic and climate change, have them worried. And again, more than past generations, mental health issues are continuing to climb with this generation.

And they’re also… this is what I find most inspirational, is that they’re poised and focused on addressing these challenges. They are activists. They’re active and engaged on levels no generation before them has been.

And I think that, for me, listening to them and listening to one particular piece that they keep saying… and the data keeps showing… is that they feel more than prior generations that the education they receive has to evolve to meet the needs of today.

And they’re particularly looking for experiences to help give them the skills and the perspectives to be able to go out and actually get in the arena and begin working on solutions. But they’re aware they need this education, and they’re also dissatisfied in where to get it and what the options are.

Denver: Yeah. And a little impatient too, I would imagine them wanting to get it, which is an asset.

What concerns do you have about this generation?

Erin: I think the concerns are that we’re not evolving fast enough.

Denver: Yeah.

Erin: I don’t have a concern around the generation. I have a concern around the systems around them really evolving in ways that serve them well and that will help them address these very immediate, demanding, impatient challenges that keep coming toward them.

Can we build systems and shift our institutions and get out of the inertia that our institutions have created to get out of the way and let them find the solutions that we frankly have been unable to find?

Denver: Absolutely. Well, let me ask you about a system or an institution, if we can call it that, and that is the workplace.

So if Gen Z were given the keys to the kingdom, and they were to have the ability to reimagine, redesign, reinvent the American and international workplace, what do you think they would do?

Erin: Well, my first thought is: I would want to ask them first.

Denver: Right. Good thought.

Erin: I’ll say that. Second…

Denver: That’s a very good answer.

Erin: Second is, I think that they are demanding that our workplace has purpose and meaning, and that no matter where they go, that people are building towards a better world, and that that is the focus of business, of government, of the nonprofit sector.

And that I think the second thing, if I were… these are guesses, but the second thing would be that work shouldn’t be the dominating factor in one’s life, and it doesn’t have to be. And can we build a world and imagine a world and then build it where work is not the dominating factor?

Denver: Yeah.

Erin: And then I think the last thing I would say is this concept of leadership and who leads, who’s given power, who’s listened to, who’s not, I think they would upend that. In fact, I hope they do. I really hope they do.

Denver: Yeah. Yeah. Very interesting. Most outstanding leaders I’ve encountered are humble people, but they’re also courageous people. And there is a linkage between humility and courage, and perhaps you found that out firsthand in your own immersive experience in Cape Town when you were younger.

Tell us a little bit about the relationship between courage and humility.

Erin: Yeah, I really appreciate you asking me that. I think it really goes back to a little bit about me. I am from this wonderful blue-collar family in tiny Cedar Flats, Oregon. And my dad is a retired logger. My mom is a retired public school teacher. And I name these because I think being raised in this blue-collar family is really core to me as a person, and it fuels my way in the world.

And growing up in this blue-collar town, I had lots of questions. I wondered: Who made the rules?  And why are the rules like this?  And what are these systems? And I think, for me, I got this incredible opportunity when I was young, and someone paid for me to go have an experience that I could never have had on my own.

So someone took a chance on me and invested in me in a way that gave me a global experience that forever changed my life. And I got this opportunity to go to Cape Town for a year through a program at the University of Oregon. And that program changed my life fundamentally.

I got to live in my first big city, which was Cape Town. I worked in a nonprofit focused on ending domestic violence. I lived in a house with five South African women from all different backgrounds. And this year changed my life fundamentally. And I think this is getting to the piece around humility and courage.

My understanding for how interrelated our challenges are was absolutely cemented. I was connecting dots globally. I was learning and also unlearning at a core visceral level, not just an academic sense. And there was a profound humility that came from that year. I think that humility led to courage. I realized I could do hard things, and they may turn out… they may not, and often may not, and that’s okay. I can still go do more hard things.

And I think those complementary forces around humility and courage led me to the role I’m in now. And I feel very lucky, like no one… most people, not everyone, gets to focus every day on providing young people an opportunity that will change their perspectives and skills, and be able to relate to the shifts and changes a young person is going to experience in such a deep way.

I have this visceral connection to the work that drives my passion and conviction. And I think the world will benefit dramatically from more young people from across all economic spectrums, all different countries, all different races, all different walks of life, having experiences like the ones we provide at Global Citizen Year.

Denver: Yeah. Well, that’s pretty cool to have had a transformational experience and now lead an organization to give others a transformational experience. That is a very, very nice virtuous circle.

You talked about leadership before. Let me ask you about leading remotely. What has that been like? How have you had it change your leadership? What works? What doesn’t work? Everybody that I talk to, they have their hands full with this one.

Erin: This is so challenging. Our challenges are like everyone else, exactly like you said, like we are all dealing with this. What does this feel like? And we are in an experimental phase. We are trying things, and we have a fundamental belief at Global Citizen Year that we are all co-collaborators, co-creators of our organizational culture, and so we’re open for ideas.

So we just piloted a really fun experience. We brought everyone together. While this was an optional experience, we brought everyone who wanted to together, and we worked from the same office for one week. It seems so novel now, but it’s how we used to work.

Denver: Yeah.

Erin: We did it just… this is not a fancy retreat. This is not something where we have a lot of scheduled speakers or anything like that. This is just literally: come to the same office and work together for one week to have a touchpoint, and the team left thrilled, like full of ideas and inspiration and connection.

And I think that’s where we  really focused, is: How do we build connection when we’re in this virtual space?  And so that’s just one example, but we’re doing multiple things like that to bring to life our mission into our work and the connection across the globe because our team is truly global.

Denver: Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting how the office has become the new offsite.

Erin: Right? Exactly. That was exactly what it felt like, and everyone left there on Cloud Nine, just so excited, you know?

Denver: Yeah. Yeah. No, that is really… I think that what we have with this remote work, we have a lot of connection, but it’s very shallow. It’s like snacking, it’s social snacking. It’s like having a nibble here.

And very rarely do you have a good nutritious meal like you did in that one week together, where you got a chance to really dig a little bit deeper into each other and spend some time together. And it’s probably a good thing to do periodically.

The other challenge that leaders are having… and you’ve done a lot of this here, but I’d like to get your philosophy on it, is change. Change is so hard, and everything is changing. Organizations are changing; the world is changing, how we deal with things.

And when I ask most leaders what’s their biggest challenge, along with leading remotely, they’ll say change management. This is so hard, so difficult. What’s your philosophy about that?

Erin: Well, I would agree that it’s very challenging, and I think what we’ve tried to do at Global Citizen Year is build a very resilient organizational culture. And we talk about how this is… we put the challenge in front of us. We say that our students come first. So are we listening to them? What are they asking for?

If they’re asking for shifts and changes, how are we working with those requests? And how are we meeting the moment as an organization? And I think when you center the impact first, when you center the young people you’re trying to serve first as the goal of what you’re doing, and you keep that forefront, then making the change is for this greater purpose.

It’s seen… there’s a why behind it. We try to keep that at the forefront, and we ask ourselves these hard questions: Is this change in service of serving more young people, in service of serving more young people better? And if the answer to that is: yes, then we can collectively get behind it and move. And I can’t even express to you how incredible this team is that I get to work with every day.

We built something that we ran for 10 years that was essentially, you know, we tweaked it at the margins, but it’s essentially the same. We completely built something new, ran that for a few years during a pandemic, and now we’ve completely built the newest innovation that incorporates all those learnings. And the team is just on fire. They’re so excited.

Denver: Oh, great!

Erin: When we launched this, we had 7,000 young people begin the application. And I think that type of response to what we’re building fuels the idea of: we got to stay relevant; we got to stay in the space where we are at the cutting edge of what young people are asking for and wanting, which requires us to be outside of our comfort zone as well. It requires us to be in our stretch zone.

Denver: Yeah, no, I think what you say about centering the young people as your North Star is really key. There’s an organization I spoke to, Population Services International, and they’re about 9- 10,000 people strong. They’re in 50 countries, and they’re into work with women and family planning and stuff like that.

But what they do is they have an archetype, and her name is Sara. And what they try to do is that every morning when they wake up– and you can say, “Sara” pretty easily in every language– every single one of their people is thinking of Sara because they don’t want to be serving the demographic; they want to be serving an individual woman.

And by keeping that center and having all your decisions around Sara or around the persons/people you’re helping, it makes decision making in so many ways so much easier, but more importantly, it makes it so much better.

Finally, Erin, there’s some studies out indicating that just 3% of students report having a transformative experience while in college, and that is incredibly disappointing. What Global Citizen Year is pioneering is a new educational pathway to launch the next generation of changemakers.

Talk a little bit about that current educational paradigm, how it needs to be upended, and the role that Global Citizen Year is doing in that.

Erin: This gets back to talking about how we… are we changing fast enough to serve this generation in ways they’re demanding to be served; and can we change fast enough? And Global Citizen Year exists to serve thousands of young people who have then had this transformational experience that makes them think about themselves differently and what they’re capable of.

Makes them think about the world differently and what’s possible, and really demonstrates the power of connections across the globe– deep, real, true connections across the globe that make you understand how connected we are, and how nuanced and different in beautiful ways we are. Those types of experiences in a young person’s education, like you said, are few and far between.

And if we can serve as a model for that, and then work within higher education across the world to take our programming and what we’ve learned and share it, then we can actually have this moment where we push higher ed into a place of serving the needs now in ways that help build this next generation’s capacity to truly meet our global challenges with solutions that have longevity, and keep solving… the next set of problems.

Denver: Mm-hmm. And every single one of those people who gets through your program becomes an ambassador for that very message.

Erin: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Denver: Erin, how do people get in touch with Global Citizen Year, whether it’s to apply for one of these programs or financially support this work?

Erin: Oh, thank you so much for asking. Yes, you can go to our website, globalcitizenyear.org. That’s the best place to get us, and we are excited to have you come check us out.

Denver: Fantastic. Well, thanks, Erin, for being here today. It was an absolute delight to have you on the program.

Erin: Thanks, Denver. I appreciate you.

The post Global Citizen Year: Creating Transformative Experiences for Young People on the Cusp of Adulthood appeared first on Global Citizen Year.

Erin Lewellen is the CEO of Global Citizen Year, a non-profit that is addressing our current global challenges by changing the composition, operating system, and impact of the next generation of changemakers. She joins host Mike Palmer in a conversation about how transformative experiences abroad can shape the pathways and perspectives of rising leaders.

Listen on Trending in Education

Erin tells of her origins in the logging culture of rural Oregon that led to her time as an undergraduate at the University of Oregon where she studied abroad for a year in Cape Town, South Africa. From there, we hear what’s happening at Global Citizen Year coming off a successful pivot to a virtual program during the pandemic years. We learn how she’s come full circle with the launch of the Take Action Lab program Global Citizen Year is running in Capetown this year. Erin describes how surprising insights from recent research have led to new directions for the program and how much of that has been driven by student voice. We hear why she is inspired working with the rising generation and how important it is to both challenge students and provide the right support to ensure we are truly developing global citizens. It’s a thought-provoking exploration of what it takes to foster a meaningful passage into adult life through global awareness, a sense of purpose, and local connections with the community. Don’t miss it!

The post Designing Programs that Develop Global Citizens with Erin Lewellen appeared first on Global Citizen Year.

Societies are no longer just locally interconnected. What happens thousands of miles away affects people worldwide. Global issues cannot be resolved by one community or country.

People must begin leadership development at a young age to ensure continued growth within their communities. The fate of humanity rests on our ability to collaborate across lines of diversity.

Erin Lewellen stepped into the CEO role at Global Citizen Year to continue the company’s mission of addressing the current global challenges. The organization pioneered a new educational pathway to launch the next generation of global changemakers. Students learn from social activists through different programs providing a different perspective on global issues. Since its inception in 2010, the company has raised $57 million and has helped over 1,500 young people find their purpose and power to change the world.

View Article on Forbes.com

“Gen Z is absolutely focused on how they are going to help us overcome some of these seemingly intractable challenges that we have right now,” Lewellen shares. “Global Citizen Year is focused on how we harness that energy but then equip this generation with the skills to act on that energy, including such things as collaborating across differences and solving problems together in a collective fashion.”

While in college, Lewellen had an opportunity to live in Cape Town, Africa, interning at a center for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. She lived with five South African women activists, which changed her view of the world; it was here that she developed a drive to work in the social impact realm.

After she graduated, she worked for a nonprofit that administered recess coaches on playgrounds throughout Oakland, California. Lewellen was eventually offered a high school basketball coaching job, where she coached for 20 years.

During this time, she became a director for the nonprofit, and then joined a social impact for profit focusing on what food options schools provide for the students. Lewellen decided after seven years there to transition to Global Citizen Year, where she would make a more significant impact globally.

“It was an opportunity to line up all the pieces,” Lewellen states. “I had always pointed to the year after college when I had that opportunity to go live in a place other than the one I had grown up in and learn in a fundamentally new way. I have attributed everything that has come after that to that moment. It opened my perspective for what I wanted to focus on in the world and what was even possible for myself. That combination is very powerful. The idea of being able to work on that every day and give other young people that opportunity from across the globe, I couldn’t pass it up.”

Recently, Lewellen and her team launched the Take Action Lab. They’ve formed relationships with other nonprofits and advocates around the world to offer students a unique experience. During an immersive semester in South Africa, students gain lifelong skills while apprenticing with experienced human rights advocates working to advance social justice. With a diverse cohort of like-minded peers from around the world, students collaborate and contribute to local solutions for global challenges.

“So many people are inspired by Gen Z like we are,” she smiles. “To be able to be a part of a young person’s growth in that moment of adolescence on the cusp of adulthood is inspiring for many different people across the world… Building a global team is first and foremost so that we have a real global approach to operating. And then we build a local team with local partnerships to bring it to life, to make sure that the young people have an opportunity to truly immerse in the communities they’re in and learn from folks on the ground.”

As Lewellen continues to evolve in her career, she focuses on the following essential steps:

• If you have the opportunity to impact a community positively, don’t hesitate to do so. Even if the gesture seems small, it can be significant for that group of people.
• Take the adventure. Experience as much as you can when you’re young to gain a worldly perspective; it’ll help you find your purpose.
• Develop relationships on a large scale. The more people that know your mission, the greater your success.

“I’ve learned to stay curious,” Lewellen concludes. “That’s one of our values over here is to focus on curiosity. We teach that to our young people. It’s the fundamental principle to stay curious… I have been able to stay curious and recognize if I was chasing the wrong problem. Curiosity helps you expand your point of view and develop innovative ways to solve problems.”

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The pandemic cut off a myriad of programs designed to help youths around the world. Erin Lewellen, CEO, Global Citizen Year, found herself having to find out her team could continue to reach out to young people — and how to keep her employees together.

View Article on BizJournals.com
“I am the CEO for Global Citizen Year, a nonprofit that recruits talented and diverse young people worldwide and provides them an immersive experience in a country other than their own. But what happens to an organization that depends on global movement — and what happens to the people in that organization — when a global pandemic occurs? When faced with an existential threat to the organization, how does equity factor into decisions?

There were layoffs, there were furloughs and there were furloughs that turned into layoffs. We made several key decisions during this confusing, emotional and turbulent moment, each of them deepening our understanding of, and commitment to, leading through an equity lens. Below are examples of how advancing equity, an organizational value, was at the forefront of our decision making. We asked ourselves:

Which of our teammates might need the most support in a global pandemic? We prioritized their well-being and focused our relief toward them. For example, we chose to carry health coverage for our furloughed and laid-off employees who needed it. This included teammates from each of our 5 countries and for some, we carried that coverage for over a year.

Across our five countries of operation, who knows the local context and the individual team members’ needs the best? Once we determined that and gathered their input, we set aside a pool of funds for those who were impacted most deeply to cover housing, travel, monthly stipends, and other needs—decisions for that disbursement were made by local leadership.

Who has the most power in this situation and how do we address that? Everyone went to reduced time, 80%, with two exceptions — the two highest earners, the CEO and Founder. The two of us took the equivalent pay cut but continued working full-time.

Are any demographic groups overly represented in any of the decisions we are making? Creating a summary of all actions and their related impact helped us ensure balance before taking action.

We also made the decision to make explicit our intention to focus relief efforts with equity at the forefront. We shared our rationale with the team, and had strong support.

We became a team of 18, down from 55, in a two week period. We emerged bruised, sprained and with tear-stained cheeks — but not broken. Our telescope showed us equity was possible and our microscope identified the path toward it, enabling resilience and strength.

As a gay woman in leadership, for decades I have worked at deepening and expanding my understanding for how to lead through an equity lens. Never did I have more practice, in a more pressurized setting than during the onset of the pandemic. Equity strategies often plod along, at a pace that can feel painfully slow. There was no time for that. My leadership is forever changed by how we navigated the organizational changes necessary to survive the pandemic. Less me. More we. Repeat.”

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View Article on FastCompany.com

On my first day as CEO of Global Citizen Year, I looked in the mirror and did not see a CEO looking back at me. I did not see a male face, or a smooth Ivy-Leaguer, or even a recent Stanford dropout turned tech exec in an expensive hoodie.

In the mirror, I saw a logger’s daughter: a blue-collar girl from tiny Cedar Flat, Oregon, who maintained her penchant for raging against the machine, and the CEOs who run said machine. A queer woman who grew up giving directions like “it’s up the river from us,” and who went to college across that river, precisely 12 miles from where she grew up. A coach at heart, someone who got a high school varsity coaching job at the age of 24 because no one else would take it, and coached for the next 20 years all while navigating the whole career thing. Someone with a nice mix of moxie and grit, but not “traditional” CEO material. I looked in the mirror and saw an impostor.

Feeling I’d fallen prey to classic impostor syndrome, I spoke with an executive coach, Jennifer McClanahan, the founder and CEO of Leverage to Lead. I was talking with her about working with our senior leadership team to map a new way of working together, one less rooted in classic hierarchy. When I mentioned that I was wondering about impostor syndrome, she asked me: “Is this actually impostor syndrome? Or do you just not see yourself leading in the same way that CEOs have traditionally led?” That really got me thinking.

When I describe any sort of discomfort with the traditional CEO approach, I am told to boss up, or labeled as a woman with classic imposter syndrome. This makes it my issue, my problem to solve. I have the syndrome, therefore I am the problem. This label, this way of shaming, perpetuates the very type of oppressive leadership we need to change.

Syndrome is an appropriate way to describe what plagues our current stack of leaders. How would we describe the syndrome of a traditional CEO who makes millions while their hourly workforce doesn’t have health insurance? How would we describe the syndrome of our political leaders who are focused solely on maintaining their own power and status, not serving the people?

Craving and hoarding personal power is not mandatory CEO behavior. In my effort to understand my potential impostor syndrome, I considered which leaders I admire and why. My short list, featuring exactly zero famous names, include Diana Fair (a female executive in the food industry ahead of her time), Precious Shelton and Jazmine Castaneda (two former captains of the basketball team I coached), Elikem Tomety Archer (our chief program officer at Global Citizen Year), my mom, and my wife.

These are their common traits that shape and inspire my leadership in this new role:

• Advancement toward the collective goal is paramount, superseding accumulation of personal power.
• They don’t front. Their exterior persona reflects their true self.
• They know what they don’t know, understand that they will never know everything, and attune their bullshit detectors to anyone who purports to know it all.
• They feel in their bones how much the people around them matter.

If you look in the mirror and don’t see a reflection of any famous traditional leader, stop calling this impostor syndrome. That burden does not belong to us. Instead, let’s set new examples for how to lead. For me, that means:

• Credit for success is distributed widely.
• Excellent work gets done, but no single person alone drives this work or the decisions.
• Collaboration and connection trump callousness and covetousness.

These revelations obviously didn’t happen overnight. It isn’t easy, working against the current, but these are some of the leadership practices that have helped me get here and keep me going.

Start the day reading from the great thinkers and feelers–not business leadership books. They have a place, but they don’t help me lead differently. The humility that comes from reading the works of activists, poets, and philosophers is unparalleled–there can’t be better medicine for CEOs than sitting with timeless questions, and remembering we don’t have the answers.

Own the mistake, even when it hurts, as a human. When I do I help facilitate an environment where people act not from fear, but from confidence.

When decisions are made at the senior level, give your team some context. Why are we heading in this direction? Why did we make that decision? As CEO, I have context that many on staff don’t, and I can’t ignore the inherent power dynamics at play. I try to consistently ask myself, “what context may be missing for the team that I am able to provide?” Without context, building common understanding is impossible. Without context, we can’t do our best work together.

Ultimately, current systems are all about inertia. They keep moving forward because we, consciously or not, perpetuate them. We even invent syndromes for people who don’t comply. I’ve continued looking in the mirror every morning. Now I see looking back at me the CEO that I was meant to be.

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After 12 years building and leading Global Citizen Year from a seed of an idea to the thriving institution it’s become, the time has come for me to pass the baton.

I’m enormously proud of what we have built, and we wouldn’t be here without your support.

Today, we have a network of nearly 2,000 alumni worldwide, a talented global team, an aspirational brand, and the strongest financial position in our history. The organization is in the best place we’ve ever been – which makes this the right moment to make this transition.

I’m pleased to announce that Erin Lewellen will be taking the reins as our new Chief Executive Officer. Erin has been my partner for 8 years and her skills and savvy have been instrumental in getting us to where we are today. She is an outstanding operator and team-builder who has the utmost trust of our staff, alumni and board. I have every confidence in her ability to guide the team to implement our strategy, and to be resilient and responsive in these unpredictable times.

With Erin at the helm, I’ve decided to take a (long overdue!) sabbatical this summer. I’m excited to create some space to pause, reflect, and dream. On my return, I look forward to designing my most impactful role in Global Citizen Year’s next chapter – catalyzing our mission, and inspiring the broader movement we’re building.

With heartfelt gratitude,

Abby

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The benefits of a gap year between high school and whatever comes next has been equally encouraged and criticized over the past century. Global Citizen Year seeks to formalize the curriculum in that gap year using the power of a global immersion to inspire curiosity, conviction, and courage among the next generation.

The organization’s CEO is social entrepreneur Abby Falik. Under her leadership, nearly 1,500 alumni have been honored as Fulbright Scholars, Davis Peace Prize winners, Gates Millennium Scholars, and Teach For America members.

Now with a major investment from MacKenzie Scott, Falik is on a mission to accelerate that growth and scale to 10,000 participants in the Global Citizen Year by 2027.

View Article on Forbes.com

Amy Shoenthal: You’re the founder and CEO of Global Citizen Year. People often get confused between what you do and the concert in Central Park.

Abby Falik: We are an entirely separate organization. Like Global Citizen, we share a vision for a world where people feel that their civic obligation and identity is global in nature. We want people to feel connected to others around the world who are committed to driving change around the issues that impact us all.

Unlike Global Citizen, we are committed to working with emerging leaders on the cusp of adulthood and giving them in-depth, intended experiences that help them shape their values and identities in ways that transform their leadership trajectory over time. What we’re doing is building a pipeline of new leaders who act with a global context.

Shoenthal: Do you have a sweet spot for the age range of those emerging leaders?

Falik: Typically they are just coming out of high school and making that critical transition that religions and societies around the world have honored for millennia, from the Mormon mission to the Israeli army service. It’s this moment when a young person has the maturity to leave home but hasn’t fixed their values and identity yet. They’re transitioning from dependence to independence.

Young people need a rite of passage that helps them leave home in a way that stretches their sense of what’s possible, that helps them understand their potential and gives them a clearer sense of purpose. That way, when they land in college or whatever it is that comes next, they’ve got a compass and a set of issues that they’re hungry to commit their lives to impact.

We are aware that Gen Z is dismayed by the state of the world and revved to get involved by driving solutions in education, public health and in racial and social justice. Those are the communities of practice that we build. We equip them with a network, social capital, skills and perspectives that help them address the issues that they care most about in the most impactful way they can.

Shoenthal: What’s your biggest focus right now?

Falik: We spent 10 years running a fellowship, which allowed 1,000 incredible young people from across the U.S. to have an immersive global experience between high school and college, where they lived alongside the global majority. We set them up to live with a family and work as an apprentice supporting a local project. They come out of that experience with a curiosity, conviction and courage as the power skills that set them on their journey.

In March of 2020, we were welcoming our 1,000th fellow home and it became an emergency evacuation instead. Over the last few years, we have not been able to send anybody on an airplane, but it has forced us to rethink the model. So we’ve spent these two years developing what we call Global Citizen Year Academy, which is an intensive leadership hub where kids not just from the U.S., but from all over the world can come to find their people, their power and their purpose. Over these two years, we’ve had 1,000 more emerging leaders, this time from 100 different countries.

Our vision is that five years from now, we’d have 10,000 young leaders per year having this new experience. My focus right now is raising a $50 million fund that helps us get from where we’ve been to where we’re going and elevating the idea and the profile in a way that inspires young people around the world and corporate and government partners to get on board. This could be a global exchange of young people that defines a whole new life stage.

Shoenthal: What will you do with a $50 million fund?

Falik: Half of it goes to scholarships. We’ve been committed to centering equity in everything we do and 80% of our students get need-based financial aid.

The other half are investments in growth, which means new educational pathways for colleges and employers. We’re thinking about how we can use the data around the learning outcomes from our experiences to influence the educational paradigm.

Shoenthal: To quote you, “As inequality widens, pandemics rage and temperatures rise, how will we equip young people with the insights, skills and networks needed to address our complex global challenges?” Can you explain, how are we equipping young people with all of those tools and how could we be doing it better?

Falik: We have focused on what we are now calling the real 21st century skills. Our ‘REAL’ skills stand for Resilience, Empathy, Agency, and Leadership. And when we talk about leadership, we have a particular definition.

We talk about leadership as a practice, not a position. It is an engine inside of each of us and a set of behaviors. It’s not a title, a salary, or arrival point. These are skills that historically have been called soft, but they’re actually the harder skills to develop and they can’t be learned in a classroom alone.

So we’ve developed a model that focuses on helping young adults develop these REAL skills because we believe they will be power skills for the future.

Shoenthal: How can regular people help push for change beyond donating and signing petitions, which frankly never feels like enough?

Falik: There’s been a conversation about clicktivism and the thinness of activism. It doesn’t ask us to do much beyond add our name to things or take us to quick, quick, quick actions. We are very focused with our students on what we call the difference between ‘real good’ and ‘feel good.’ So many of the things we’re invited to do really emphasize what makes us feel good about ourselves, when in reality, the real good may require messiness and complexity.

If it feels thin, it probably is, and that might be our clue to dig deeper into the question of what would it look like to address the root cause of this issue that I’m tweeting about or to actually give something up? And how can we do that in service of a more impactful approach to addressing an issue that matters?

I think sometimes in the aggregate this type of noise helps, but ultimately, we’re in the business of shaping humans who can then shape a different future. And that work is messy, expensive, and long term. There’s nothing clean and tidy about it. That’s why I do what I do. To make sure we’re raising a new generation of people who are committed to having the courage to do harder things.

Shoenthal: You recently received a $12M investment from MacKenzie Scott which you told me, “has us thinking bigger and bolder than ever.” What do you plan to do with that investment?

Falik: We’ve thought big and bold from the beginning. Her investment was really a vote of confidence, a stamp of credibility. MacKenzie Scott is revolutionizing philanthropy. She is taking a very diligent and rigorous approach to vetting organizations. Once an organization is deemed to be doing great work and she can assess the resources it needs, she is making huge gifts with no strings attached, which really emphasizes trust and partnership. I like this idea of moving philanthropy from a patronage to a partnership.

A social entrepreneur and a team have committed their lives to solving a certain social problem. The role of the philanthropist is to empower that team to do more of what they’re doing, not to create a whole bunch of strings and constraints around that work. And so what the investment did for us was it kicked off this $50 million fund. We’re calling in our ‘New Leaders Fund’ and it has inspired other people to join. My friend pointed out that no one wants to be first to invest, but everyone wants to be first to be second.

In the last few months, we have matched her contribution through other contributions. We’re now about halfway toward our five year goal.

Shoenthal: What’s next for you? For Global Citizen Year?

Falik: I am excited about this next chapter because it’s going to draw on everything I’ve learned personally and everything the organization has done since we started in 2010. We need new pathways, more leaders, more representation in leadership and leaders who are more empathetic and globally oriented.

We are creating a blueprint that changes this whole life stage.

The post With A $12 Million Investment From MacKenzie Scott, Global Citizen Year Is Shaping The Next Generation Of Leaders appeared first on Global Citizen Year.

Learn more about MacKenzie Scott’s philanthropy and her $12M investment in Global Citizen Year.

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Listen to the Podcast Episode

Abby shares how her personal origins factored into the development of GCY and how the pandemic years have driven other transformations including the launch of Global Citizen Year Academy which uses online tools as means of connecting a truly global cohort. We also talk about Mackenzie Scott’s recent $12M investment in GCY that is described in this Forbes article. Then we wrap things up with Abby’s perspectives on working with the rising generations and her outlook on what’s emerging on the horizon.

It’s an inspirational conversation about developing future leaders that you won’t want to miss.

The post Launching the Next Generation of Global Leaders with Abby Falik appeared first on Global Citizen Year.

Listen to the Podcast Episode

Partial Transcript:

HOFFMAN: The central role that business and economic activity plays in building community is often overlooked. But it is something I am a big believer in. And this story is a prime example of how business helps build integration, understanding, and prosperity. It shows that bridging gaps between communities can bring new perspectives and experiences together.

This is something that Abby Falik has immense experience in. Abby is the founder of Global Citizen Year, a non-profit that organizes eight-month immersive experiences overseas for promising future leaders.

ABBY FALIK: Our fellows are not development workers. They are there as apprentices, supporting a local project in education, climate, public health, and economic mobility. And what that means is that they are humbling themselves by being challenged to see themselves and the world through a completely new lens.

HOFFMAN: This radical exposure to different lived experiences gives the fellows the awareness and insight to make positive change in their own communities.

FALIK: It’s about teaching them to understand what community they’re a part of and how to be an impactful and appropriate contributor to community work wherever they find themselves.

Many of our students come back with a sense that the most appropriate place to start having an impact is closer to home in their own communities. Whether that’s running for a local school board, whether it’s starting an enterprise, making sure that kids in their community have internet access.

So it’s that shift from confidence to humility, from knowing the answers to carrying the questions, from managing through brute force to sort of a more organic and community-centered way of leading; and frankly from just managing from our heads to a sort of integrated head and heart, which I think is what the world needs most, and we don’t have enough of yet.

HOFFMAN: I love the way Abby lays this out: what every community needs most is a shift from just managing with our heads to an integrated head and heart.

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