Powering Executive Leaders of Color Across the PK-12 Education Ecosystem: A Test Case for Innovation and Scaling at The Surge Institute

Abstract

The demographics of our nation’s public schools continue to diversify. Less than 50% of our nation’s public school students are white, however, less than 25% percent of superintendents identify as People of Color. To that end, retention of diverse leaders specifically, Black Women across all sectors is in decline. The mission of The Surge Institute is to educate and develop leaders of color who create transformative change for young people, their families, and our broader communities. Surge has been directly tackling the lack of diverse leadership throughout the PK-12 Education Ecosystem through its fellowship and academy since 2014 by creating supportive spaces for leaders of color designed for change. Surge is now scaling its best-in-class programming for C-suite and executive leaders. This capstone highlights my twofold residency project. I led the creation and launch of Power Surge, a space to convene and power c-suite leaders of color across the PK-12 Education Ecosystem, however, the launch of Power Surge also provided an opportunity to support the organization with its scaling efforts. Surge has been an innovator since it was founded, however as Surge is called to expand its best-in-class heart, head, and spirit programming for leaders, an opportunity presented itself to learn from the launch of Power Surge. This launch has allowed Surge to codify the core and explore strategy it has used for years, and the alignment, processes, and culture necessary to effectively leverage this strategy. Over 10 months I sought to answer the following questions: how to create safe and impactful spaces where executive leaders of color in the education sector can convene, grow, and thrive; and (2) how to leverage the work of Power Surge to provide a roadmap for explore work that would enable Surge to continue scaling and having an impact. Through the analysis of this project, I was able to provide implications for our sector on how to better support and sustain executive leaders of color, and how philanthropy needs to better support proximate organizations to innovate and scale. I was also able to support Surge in understanding what needs to be true organizationally to have an effective core and explore strategy to successfully scale and innovate.