Uncommon Talent: Impacting Early Literacy, One Book at a Time
What will it take to impact the school readiness of millions of urban children? According to Earl Martin Phalen, it starts with a trusted professional handing them a book.
Earl should know. He’s been a champion for urban education since 1992. He recently became the Chief Executive Officer of Reach Out and Read, a national early literacy program. Previously, he was the CEO of Building Educated Leaders for Life (BELL), an out-of-school time education program, as well as the Founder and Chair of Summer Advantage USA, which combats summer learning loss.
A longtime friend and client of Commongood Careers, Earl caught us up on Reach Out and Read’s current impact and aggressive growth plans, including the inside scoop on the organization’s hiring needs in the near future.
Congratulations on your new role, Earl. Tell us about Reach Out and Read, particularly its approach to addressing early literacy.
Thanks. I’m thrilled to be at the helm of such an innovative, evidence-based organization that is addressing such an important social issue.
Reach Out and Read looks to answer one critical question: how do we ensure that kids are prepared to enter kindergarten? Currently, nearly 35% of all children in this country go to kindergarten with literacy skills that are below grade level. This could mean some do not even know how to hold a book correctly; others may not be able to recognize letters of the alphabet.
To address this skill deficit, our method is to get to children early. We focus on kids aged 0-5 who live in urban and rural environments. Our program is unusual in the sense that it’s not offered in a traditional educational environment, but rather in pediatrician offices. In these settings, our programs make early literacy a standard part of pediatric primary care, from interacting with a trained literacy specialist volunteer in the waiting room to receiving advice regarding the importance of reading and a book to take home from their doctor or nurse.
Our approach is all about leverage. We seek to leverage the fact that most parents trust what doctors say. So if a pediatrician communicates that reading is an essential piece of childhood brain development, and that a nurse shows a child the correct way to hold a book and stimulate a child’s natural curiosity, both parents and children will listen. The results have been astounding. To date, we’ve reached nearly 4 million children at 4,500 hospitals and healthcare centers nationwide. In 11 peer-review and longitudinal studies, we’ve found that parents are significantly more engaged and children are better prepared when they enter kindergarten.
How did your personal career path lead to Reach Out and Read?
While at BELL, I was part of a team that grew to serving over 15,000 children nationwide. Our team worked incredibly hard. The hallmark of our programs was our summer learning session, which gave me the idea to start a program devoted completely to summer learning. With $1M from a Mind Trust fellowship and the Indiana Department of Education, I founded Summer Advantage USA, a program that provides rigorous academic programming during the summer months.
From there, I found myself asking the question: how can nonprofit leaders continue to make real impact, but without creating 150 new nonprofits every day? There has to be ways to create back-office efficiencies, as well as a pipeline that serves the needs of children from postnatal to postgraduate. It was this thinking that led me to Reach Out and Read. The opportunity to lead an organization that has such a huge presence fit with my personal vision for what it takes to impact children early on. With the opportunity to serve the 14 million children living in poverty in this nation, and to ensure that they all enter kindergarten ready to excel and with engaged parents, was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.
How is Reach Out and Reach poised to grow in the near future?
The first step of scaling is securing the additional government funding that is key to our growth. This is one of the largest tasks on our plate right now.
From there, we plan to raise the growth capital that will build up the infrastructure of the organization quite a bit. This includes expanding the staff of our national headquarters in Boston, as well as being better able to support our 35 state coalitions that oversee 4,500 program sites. We want to build up the infrastructure nationally, within each of our state coalitions, so the entire organization can better deliver on our responsibilities and service to children and families.
In addition to strengthening our existing program sites, we plan to open over 150 new sites in this fiscal year. At any given time, we hope to have between 300-400 applications for new sites in the works. Being able to sustain this rapid growth is a huge piece to our ability to succeed. Since we’ve found such high demand for our program, our daily challenge is how do we build the organization in a way that we’re able to support every one of our sites with the same level of excellence that we see today.
What does this mean for the hiring needs of the organization? Do you anticipate bringing on more talent for both your headquarters and coalition sites?
Currently, some of our coalition sites have just one part-time leader, others have up to 7 full-time staff. Our goal is to make sure that every coalition has the maximum strength in a few core areas, namely customer service, fundraising, training and technical assistance. To do this will require adding staff in some areas, both in local markets and at the national level. Building organizational strength is what’s at the heart of these efforts.
At the national level, adding to our fundraising capabilities will be key to our success. Currently, we have staff who work against a range of fundraising strategies, but our team is lean. In the near future, we hope to expand this team so that we can deepen each of our fundraising avenues, such as major corporate sponsorships. There is such opportunity for major corporate funders to get involved, particularly those seeking exposure to millions of parents of young children.
As you think about the aggressive growth on your plate, what organizations do you look to as models of scalability and sustainability?
There are many social entrepreneurs who have leveraged functional area best practices in order to scale and sustain their organizations. The first that comes to mind is Teach For America. They are excellent across a number of areas, particularly branding, fundraising, and the ability to attract top talent.
BELL demonstrates a model of an evidence-based organization that has successfully found a niche that has a positive effect on both children and parents. This is a phenomenon that Reach Out and Read shares as well, and one we hope to continue to capitalize upon.
Year Up is a great model of organizational sustainability. The ability to have a revenue source that is consistently renewable is something that we plan on emulating as well.
From a talent perspective, what does it take to be successful at Reach Out and Read? When ramping up your national team, what will you look for in new hires?
All of our staff must be hard-working, entrepreneurial, smart, and have phenomenal communication skills. They must also have very high standards and self-confident. This goes across all roles, from the coalition sites to the national headquarters.
The people who will thrive at our organization will have the dual ability to work independently and also be part of a cross-functional team.
Like most entrepreneurial organizations, it’s important to leave your ego at the door. Our staff need to be comfortable sharing ideas, and know that some will move forward and others won’t. It all comes down to humility and work ethic.
Perhaps more than anything, we look for talent who believe in what we’re doing. I hope that anyone interested in a position at Reach Out and Reach will share the belief that we are doing something incredibly important and that our work is making and will continue to make a huge impact on early literacy, school readiness, and most importantly, the future of our children and this country.
For more information about Reach Out and Read, please visit www.reachoutandread.org.
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