Photo by Saverio Truglia

Dan Morrell: When Constance Jones (MBA 2008) joined the Noble Network of Charter Schools in Chicago in 2015 as the chief external affairs officer, she became the first person of color to join Noble’s leadership—even though 98 percent of the network’s students come from communities of color. Within the next few years, a perfect storm of challenges began to take shape.

“I would even say a typhoon, to be completely and totally honest with you.”

The charter network faced a Chicago political landscape in upheaval, with a teacher strike looming and a heated mayoral race underway with education as a focal point. And then, in the fall of 2018, the organization’s founder and CEO stepped down amidst allegations of inappropriate behavior and misconduct with Noble alumni, and the board appointed Jones as his replacement.

Now a year into the role, Jones talks to Associate Editor Jen Flint about how she faced the challenge of taking over an organization in crisis—and found her authentic self in the process.

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Jen Flint: I’m curious how you felt about this personally, this moment in your professional career, having the opportunity to step into the CEO role, but at a time in this organization that’s so riddled with crisis and challenge, how did you feel personally about taking this role on given the stakes?

Constance Jones: Sure, so we’re about to have a full-on therapy session. Let me just tell you that right now. I’ll be real with you because I believe in leading with honesty. I was really angry at first. I was angry for the alums that were impacted through these allegations of inappropriate behavior. And it hit me particularly hard being a woman of color and seeing myself in their shoes at one point in time. You know, we’ve seen this across the country in so many ways, where men have behaved poorly and often resign or are fired, and then it is oftentimes a woman who has to step in and clean up the mess. The work is already so hard. It’s a blessing to do it, I would not want to work in service to anyone else in terms of the communities of color that we serve in the community that we serve, but it’s tough. It’s really tough. Our kids often come to us with a lot of trauma. They come to us academically behind. And we’re working day in and day out and giving our all to provide them with the opportunities they deserve to pursue a life of opportunity. But that takes a lot of work.

There’s that—and then there’s this crisis that’s happening. And I just was like, you know, how am I and how are we going to do all of this? And with kids, you don’t get second chances. You’ve got to get this right. The stakes were already high and, you know, it’s funny because people also forget that leaders are human beings. You know, I got my own stuff going on. I’m going through a divorce. And, you know, I’ve struggled over the past year with taking care of myself personally.

I’ve had to unapologetically prioritize working out, eating healthy just so I can have the fuel and the stamina to get through these long days. I lost my father a couple years ago from cancer, and so, like, you know, I’m just starting to come out of that typhoon and making sure that my family’s OK. So like as a human being, I don’t know if I have what it takes to get through all of this.

But it’s amazing what you can go through when you have to and how strong you can be when you have to. And sometimes as leaders, you know, we act very inauthentically and we think like, Ok, I’ve got to show up tomorrow and be the leader and be the stronghold and show courage under fire. And forget it. I’ve gotten in front of our staff a few times since I became CEO and just been very candid about how the last now nine months have been some of the toughest nine months of my life. And it’s been tough for various reasons. And that’s OK, because at the end of the day, what has helped me get up in the morning and do this work are the kids and our teachers and our staff members. And that is what gave me tremendous peace and tremendous optimism and tremendous focus. I went through the whole spectrum of feelings and emotions, but that was very necessary for me to get to a placewhere I could then lead with tremendous clarity. And that clarity was important, because when you’re talking about changing and evolving an organization, you better have clarity because there’s so many people whose feelings and emotions and fear can make you change course. So that was my process and I recognize that could look very different for other people.

Flint: You mentioned the kids and there’s 12,000 of them across the network, and I think about 98 percent of them are from communities of color. Can you talk about the challenges you saw as the only woman, as the only person of color in that environment? And what does it mean for your students to have you there in the room?

Jones: On the one hand, unfortunately, I have almost always been the youngest, the blackest, the only female in so many different environments. So, for example, when I went to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, I was a business major. And I remember being only one of less than 10 African Americans in the undergraduate business program out of 330 in our class. When I started at Johnson & Johnson right after business school, I remember being the only African American female pharmaceutical sales rep in the mid-Atlantic region at that time.

It’s a sad reality, but that is also why I get so fired up about doing the work I do with the 98 percent of the kids I serve. This is my opportunity to change that. It needs to change. It is still very uncomfortable for me at times. I think the biggest thing I’ve struggled with is feeling small. There’s power in numbers. And when you’re the only person in a room with people who don’t look like you and in fact, they all look the same, I’ve often found that I felt small. What that translates to is me struggling at times to speak my truth.

And the reason why that is so detrimental for organizations and businesses is because … let’s think about the Noble context, where 98 percent of the kids we serve are people of color. There’s a certain lens, a perspective that I bring to this work. Period. It is so incredibly important that my thoughts and ideas are put on the table—as well as others’. That’s what diversity is all about. It sometimes makes me shudder to think there are places where I probably should have pushed more, and I did not push because I felt small or I felt like I might be seriously in the minority in terms of introducing an idea or different way of thinking. Could I have impacted kids in a much better, more positive way if I had the courage in those moments to speak up and speak out?

And so that’s why, when then becoming CEO, it kind of broke open the gate for me to be able to drive some much-needed changes to evolve our organization for the students and staff members that we serve.

Flint: I wondered if you could talk a little bit more about two of the areas where you changed the impact on the students right away. One being discipline, which is an area where some charter schools have received a lot of media attention, with this no-excuses brand of discipline, and the other being the dress code. And you made a big splash, of course, when you showed up early in your days as CEO with purple hair. Can you talk about the values that you’re bringing to these decisions and the changes that you wanted to institute and why?

Jones: As a woman of color, I have often struggled with bringing my authentic self to school, to work, to any environment where I was the minority. And in those moments of questioning, doubting, feeling insecure, I know that I also was not bringing my best ideas, my best thinking oftentimes. And so it was really important to me that for our students who come to school every day, for a staff members that we were creating a safe environment. And that means lots of things: That means physical safety, but it also means the opportunity for people to show up and feel like they can be themselves. That’s where our students are going to be able to learn and thrive and grow. And that’s where our staff and our adults will hopefully be able to do the same in their respective roles. I hold deeply this belief that diversity, equity, and inclusion is incredibly important to people being able to show up, bring their full selves to work or bring their full selves to school and do their best work as students, as staff members. I saw an incredible opportunity for us to evolve in this way.

And as you mentioned, for years since the 1990s, when a lot of charter schools started to open and grow, there has been this idea that we need super strict discipline and no excuses. And here’s the thing: It is 2019, and times are different. There’s this old saying: Now that you know better, you got to do better. Right? And so we have a responsibility to continue to evolve.

And so I can tell you that in my now 38 years of life, I’ve never dyed my hair any color in the crayon box. It just hasn’t happened. I’ve done a little bit of blond and I’ve done a little bit of auburn, but I’ve never I’ve never gone purple. But that was very intentional. I felt like I needed to lead from the front line and make a very bold statement that when I say I want you to bring your full self to school or work, I mean it. I got rid of lots of old charter school policies like restricting hair color, tattoos—I got rid of all of that. I wanted people to feel comfortable showing up and being themselves, students and staff.

This work is so hard and it requires so much intentionality, and I’m very grateful for all the folks who are thinking day in and day out about how do the decisions we make big and small impact our ability to serve our kids and prepare them for college. But the one thing that I had not been able to uncover was any evidence or research that shows that hair color impacts one’s ability to get kids into college. We have to really start pushing ourselves to focus on the things that matter and to make sure that we are being reflective in our practice and not just putting rules in place.

I can’t tell you how many how many people came crying and very upset, questioning whether we were the same Noble, the same organization. And there was a lot of fear of what these changes really, really meant. Those conversations have been enlightening and powerful in lots of ways, and I think helped us get better as an organization.

Skydeck is produced by the External Relations department at Harvard Business School and edited by Craig McDonald. It is available at iTunes or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. For more information or to find archived episodes, visit alumni.hbs.edu/skydeck.

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