A Conversation with Lesley Poole and Vincena Allen

Lesley Poole (LEFT) is the Chief Executive Officer at The SEED Foundation. Lesley was one of The SEED School of Washington, D.C.’s founding faculty members. For 25 years she held positions ranging from Director of Admissions to Director of Parent & Community Relations to Head of School for student life. Since transitioning from her leadership roles at SEED D.C. to The SEED Foundation, Lesley served in several management positions at the Foundation, including Director of Government Relations for six years before becoming CEO.

Lesley began her career in education as a mathematics instructor. She later served for two years as the service area director of the School Division of the San Francisco Educational Services (SFED), where she oversaw five programs working with inner-city children with special needs in San Francisco. She received her bachelor’s degree from Patten College in organizational management. Lesley is a member of the Spring 2017 cohort of the highly selective Pahara-Aspen Education Fellowship, a partnership with The Pahara Institute and The Aspen Institute that identifies exceptional leaders in educational excellence and equity movement, especially those serving low-income children and communities. Lesley has made building leaders, service to her faith community and partnership with her nieces and nephews, the intention of her life, and the narrative for her legacy. Building the nation's only network of public boarding schools has been a gift and an honor, and she is deeply indebted to the families and students of The SEED Network.

Vincena Allen (RIGHT) serves as the Chief Growth Officer for The SEED Foundation, where she oversees all college transition and support efforts across the network, provides support and strategic thinking to college readiness and counseling initiatives at the SEED Schools, and oversees the human resources department. In her 17 years at SEED, Vincena has been integral to articulating and implementing an expanded vision of the SEED Foundation, growing the College Transition & Success program, and leading efforts to build the foundation staff to keep pace with growth. She is currently expanding SEED’s success with college matching to a technology platform.

Prior to joining The SEED Foundation, Ms. Allen served as the assistant director of the D.C. Metro Area Consortium of Universities’ College Information Center and worked in student affairs at colleges/universities in the mid-Atlantic and mid-West. She is a member of EdLoC, and widely recognized as a thought leader in college access and success. She has spoken at National College Access Network (NCAN), the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC), NASPA (Student Affairs Professionals in Higher Education), and College Board conferences. She is a board member for Common App and has also written for the Huffington Post. Ms. Allen’s interest in human development and talent led her to completing the Emerging Human Capital Leaders Fellowship sponsored by Education Pioneers and Urban Schools Human Capital Academy. She recently participated in the Aspen Global Leadership Network (AGLN) Rising Leader’s Circle. Ms. Allen has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Allegheny College, a master’s degree from the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania, and a certificate of non-profit management from Columbia University’s Executive Level Business program.

Meredith Callanan: Let's start our conversation by talking about the unique SEED Foundation model of public education and how that serves underrepresented students who seek a college preparatory education.

Lesley Poole: SEED is the only network of urban college preparatory public boarding schools across the country. The needs of all young people are diverse, regardless of zip code, and families and communities deserve options that meet those unique needs. We are focused on low-income, Black and Latinx students who seek a college degree. Eighty percent of our graduates are first-generation, college-bound students, and 86% of our graduates are eligible for Pell Grants in college.

SEED exists in communities where there is resiliency and a great expectation for what is still to come: Southeast Washington, D.C.; Southwest Baltimore; Opa-Locka, Dade County, Florida; and South Los Angeles. Other people might describe these communities in a disparaging way. We see opportunity and hope there, where people take great pride. With our four schools, we have planted good seed in rich soil.

A 24-hour learning environment gives us the gift of time to support and close achievement and opportunity gaps, and to identify the social and emotional competencies that our students need. We see and address everything that comes with our students and their families, so our model wraps a rigorous academic and life skills development program around each student, delivered by a community of caring adults. Time provides an opportunity for a differentiating level of support and first-time exposure experiences for our students – as simple as visiting a college campus or being part of a foreign exchange experience.

Our approach has a significant impact on the lives of our students. Here are four key data points: 1) nearly 100% of our students complete high school vs 78% for low-income US students; 2) 83% of our students immediately enroll in a 4-year institution vs 55% from low-income high schools; 3) 48% of our graduates complete college vs 11% of low-income first-generation students; and 4) when our graduates attend a "right-fit" institution, that graduation rate goes up to 68%. And these are only the hard numbers – not the life trajectories and personal stories that have changed as a result.

Vincena Allen: Education is not one size fits all. SEED is the right option for those who will benefit most from wrap-around support, or from the deep sense of community that comes from living together 24 hours a day, or from the sense of safety our schools provide. SEED provides an unusual, welcoming option – a sense of relatedness, a sense of belonging – that is not always available at other educational choices.

Our model equips students to navigate the obstacles that they were not responsible for creating. We connect them to resources, to people, to knock down barriers, to push through systems so they can realize all they already have. How to make those systems work for them, so they can move through and out of generational poverty. So they can transform their lives in a way they may have never imagined.

Callanan: What are the foundational beliefs that drive your work?

Poole: Our deep belief is that families bring us their best every day. They partner with us. They have a set of hopes and dreams for their children that is expressed in a sacrifice that they make in sending their children away to school. SEED sees the family partnering with us as an expression of vision, of strategic decision-making, of courage.

Allen: When it comes to working with our students and families, we look at assets. We're not coming into the partnership with our communities and families looking at them as broken or deficient. We celebrate and honor the dignity of the people that we are lucky enough to partner with. We're grounded in a strengths-based approach. When Stanford professor Dr. Carol Dweck defines a growth mindset, she says, it's not yet. It's not that there's something wrong with you. There are areas for growth. It's not that you can't do it. It's about it not happening yet. At SEED, we establish systems and pathways that provide access to what our students need to thrive and we know they can do it.

Our students are the definition of resilience and persistence. Life never looks like a straight line. There are highs, there are lows. We have students who have never taken their eye off of their college completion goal. But life happens, and some think, I'm never going to make it. One student ended up trying two or three colleges before it worked for her – she did not start off at “right fit” institutions. Ten years later, she has a college degree, and is doing what she always wanted to do. She needed support to remind her that she can make it. Her persistence is paying off in ways that benefit her, her family, and the community. And she inspired us to create a new approach to ensuring success for our students in applying to, selecting, and completing college. 

Callanan: SEED has always been focused on college attainment. What is the impact on our country and the world when your students hold college degrees? 

Poole: I think of a mountain climber connected to someone else as they try to scale to the summit. There is a whole body of movement, thinking, and communication when you’re climbing and connected to someone else on a rope. A college degree strengthens one individual to be connected to another. SEED graduates are consistently creating connections to encourage other students to say, “You can do this. Go ahead, connect to my rope. I got you.” One graduate’s success becomes the connective tissue that lifts up the entire community.

Allen: Young people with a degree get access to opportunities they may never have been exposed to, and it changes their economic trajectory. It increases the opportunity to have sustained and high-quality health care. It decreases the likelihood that they will experience unemployment. It diminishes the anguish of housing and food insecurity. It creates opportunities to build the next generation of diverse leaders. It enables students to recognize their power to be disruptors of the inequitable systems that actually caused them to have to fight. The power and richness of having that college degree also helps their families, communities, and other young people who look like them.

This isn't anything that we're making up – the data says it, quantitatively and qualitatively. We are relentless about establishing a college-bound, college-completion culture, which is why early on we developed a robust College Transition & Success (CTS) program. This provides comprehensive support to our students to and through college and beyond. For us, high school graduation and college enrollment is just the beginning. We're focused on taking the knowledge that we have, the data that supports that degree attainment – not just that piece of paper, but everything that went into it. We know that degree has the ability to transport the lives of our students.

Callanan: Tell us more about the CTS Program. What makes this program so impactful?

Allen: This program started because of who SEED is and our belief in the dignity and worth of all students. Ensuring that they know they have a right to higher education; the right to accurate, relevant information; the right to have a full understanding of the college journey. The right and relevant information makes a difference. It is a game changer.

Our approach to college counseling is more about transformation and impact, and less about transactional processes like just completing applications. It starts with being present, available, committed – we are working with students wherever they are on their journey, regardless of what comes up for them in life. We unpack all the steps that people don't usually talk to students and families about, the myriad of processes, such as the detailed nuances of financial aid accessibility and how to make informed choices. And we stay with it. We’ll say, “You're not done yet!” We are persistent.

Our model reflects that this is not just about getting students into college. It's about ensuring that our students are choosing colleges that have evidence of success in serving the students that we serve, and that's different. We do this through our innovative approach to college matching and through ‘intrusive advising.” Yes, intrusive, because if we're not hearing from a student, our advisors are well versed in figuring out who else we know in that student’s network. We'll find out what's going on. We're deeply present. We're relentless. And if they step out of college, we don't stop working with them.

Poole: Students and families from our most underserved communities have the right to be informed consumers and to make decisions based on a higher education institution’s ability to support college completion. Our CTS model puts low-income, first-generation students at the center to transform the systems that enable students to complete college. For our students, a college degree is an enormous financial and emotional investment. So, they must have a seat at the “college success” table. They must know and fully understand the relevant data about postsecondary success. This is a matter of equity. I can't imagine that equity exists anywhere where information is not accessible. An equitable practice provides access to information, to the right information and to all of it.

Callanan: You’ve mentioned your innovative approach to college matching. What is the “right fit” model that you’ve created?

Allen: College matching matters! When SEED students attend “right fit” colleges, they earn college degrees at a rate more than five times greater than other low-income, first-generation students. We believe it is critical to expose students to higher education institutions that are showing consistent success with and commitment to graduating underrepresented students.

So, SEED developed a data-driven approach that evaluates colleges and universities based on key characteristics that we know are indicative of college completion. For example, college graduation rates suggest what's happening to students and their ability to graduate. Another example is college affordability. It's not about whether a student received a financial aid package. It's the quality of that financial aid package and the access to ongoing, quality financial aid – not just for that first year. We want to know the average amount of debt students are graduating with from an institution.

We probe the quality of student support services on a college campus. Is there an established program? Is tutoring offered by peers or professionals? What is the mental health support system like? Will disability support services provide the right support to our students? We want to know that the institution supports cultural competency with programs that are helping students navigate issues like microaggressions, programs that have evidence of success.

We’re weeks away from completing a robust new technology platform that will even more effectively support SEED’s ability to connect students to “right fit” institutions. For our students, there is a direct relationship between college matching, college enrollment and college completion, so we will continue to invest and innovate here.

Callanan: Lesley, you’re in your eighth year as CEO, and SEED is entering its 26th year as an organization. What are your leadership priorities for the future?

Poole: It's a time of reflection for us. The future will entail being more intentional about building a culture of long-term sustainability and succession planning. Sharing information with our peers is a strategy for sustainability. Sharing job responsibilities is a strategy for succession planning.

I am walking in my leadership purpose when I am creating leadership opportunities for other leaders. But I must admit, it has been challenging as a woman and a woman of color. I want to remove some of those challenges for the next group of leaders around me. It’s important that we are deliberate in inviting leaders throughout our organization into the unique SEED “sausage-making.” So often, there are leaders who are loyal to the organization but don't get the opportunity to lead outside their specific area of responsibility. In addition to having senior leaders who are experts in the area of programming, I hope to grow the capacity of leaders to lead and manage fundraising, organizational financials, and SEED’s advocacy efforts.

We also want to reimagine scale. How do we take what we've learned, and move it outside of the SEED network and share it broadly with other communities of learners and educators who are interested in the outcomes that we have achieved over the last 25 years? We just opened SEED Los Angeles. Will there be a fifth or sixth SEED school? I think, yes. But, there is also a role for SEED to help other organizations stand up their own public boarding schools without the SEED name on them. We are committed to public boarding opportunities for more students, families, and communities, whatever form that takes. And we hope to take our learnings from the CTS work to our peers around the country, looking for opportunities to work together in new ways.

Callanan: You know a lot about delivering an equitable, transformational education to students who initially didn’t have access to it. What is your message to others trying to do this work?

Allen: True transformation can only occur if we are collaborating across all sectors. As leaders, we have to let go of some of what we think is right. To do the big work, we must be open to unique and unimagined partnerships. To do the uncommon, we have to lean into bold leadership. Let go of territorialism and collaborate authentically. Transforming education requires more than educators. It's not the leaders alone who are the face of organizations. It's the clients in communities, the students, and whomever is being served and supported. We must have those voices in the conversation and a part of the decision-making matrix. Be open to coming to the table with others from across a myriad of groups. Working together, we will have collective impact at a deeply meaningful and transformational level.

Poole: This is a little emotional for me. While it is my hope that we are in this together, it has not been my complete experience. There's a lot that we've learned in the last 25 years. We have a responsibility to not keep it to ourselves. Our new CTS platform is a good example – we look forward to working with others to expand what we’ve learned about college completion for underrepresented students beyond the SEED community.

I would say: first, stay committed to this work; it’s the right work to be doing. Second, invite an unlikely ally to the table, those often overlooked, those who haven’t scaled at the traditional “education reform” pace.

Callanan: What gives you both hope?

Allen: How can we not be hopeful with these young people who are the next generation? I see their enthusiasm, energy, and spark. With equity at the core of our work, we can continue to cultivate their aspirations. Our young people deserve a great future. We must remain relentless and intentional.

Poole: Our community of families and students are reason to hope. I am not naive. I know it’s a fragile time for our country, but it’s not time to cast away our confidence. We are providing choice and options to families and students that didn’t exist 25 years ago. And there is evidence in our data that given the right fit opportunity, young people will thrive. A thriving community of young people sounds like a reason to be hopeful.

Callanan: Thank you both! I hope this conversation sparks many new opportunities for collaboration. 

About the Author:

Meredith Callanan was a senior leader at T. Rowe Price Group for many years, focusing on marketing and communications, corporate responsibility, and philanthropy, before participating in the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative as a Fellow in 2019. As a Senior Fellow in 2020 and 2021, she conducted national research on leadership diversity and development in the U.S. early care and education (ECE) sector which culminated in her establishing the Early Years Leadership Diversity Initiative to address barriers to advancement for emerging and rising leaders in ECE.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.