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When Kwame Owusu-Kesse (MBA/MPP 2012) was in his last year of graduate school, he got a call from Geoffrey Canada, founder and CEO of Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), a nonprofit that takes a comprehensive, cradle-to-career approach to meeting the health and education needs of 12,000 children and 11,000 community members. Owusu-Kesse had already spent a year at Canada’s side, thanks to an externship sponsored by his employer, Morgan Stanley. Now Canada wanted him back.

“I had no idea how much money I would make. I had no idea what my title would be. But I had drunk the Kool-Aid at HCZ,” he recalls. “I said, ‘Absolutely. Sign me up.’ It was the luck of bingo that changed my life trajectory. I wanted to be part of something that took luck out of the equation for others.”

That bingo reference harks back to Owusu-Kesse’s childhood in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his mother, a Ghanaian immigrant, met Sisters Pauline and Rosemarie while trying her luck at the local Catholic school’s weekly game. The nuns’ interest in Kwame and his family’s circumstances ultimately led to a scholarship at Venerini Academy, which put him on a path to college. (He attended Harvard as an undergraduate, majoring in economics.)

“The challenges that exist in the lives of the young people we serve in central Harlem—extreme poverty, domestic violence, a single-parent household—existed in my family in one way, shape, or form,” says Owusu-Kesse. “I feel called to this work. It’s not about charity or feeling good about myself; it’s about unlocking the great potential that exists in this community.”

After joining HCZ as a senior manager and special assistant to Canada, Owusu-Kesse was named COO in 2014; in July 2020, he became CEO. (Canada continues to serve as the nonprofit’s president.) Stepping into the organization’s top leadership role in the midst of a pandemic came with unexpected challenges, which included overseeing the launch of a hybrid teaching model in two of HCZ’s charter schools, implementing safety protocols, and addressing the sweeping inequities that COVID-19 has laid bare in communities of color, all while continuing to operate its Baby College parenting workshops, preschool, and health programs.

A significant aspect of HCZ’s success has been the codification and expansion of its place-based, holistic model in other cities. In that spirit, the nonprofit broadened a $20 million relief and recovery fundraising effort to a $50 million goal that will aid partner organizations in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Newark, and Oakland. (Thanks to Owusu-Kesse’s seven-minute TED talk, HCZ raised $26 million on the Audacious platform and is currently $33 million toward its goal.) “Being able to hand over a check to communities outside of New York, and knowing those resources will reach the hands of those most in need, was a very special moment,” he observes.

HCZ’s formal support of communities beyond Harlem dates to 2003, when the organization established its Practitioners Institute to share best practices and offer guidance to groups looking to adopt its approach to transforming neighborhoods battling poverty, poor health, underperforming schools, and high crime rates. Since 2005, HCZ has engaged with more than 500 US and 175 foreign communities. Complementing that effort is the new William Julius Wilson Institute, an external-facing initiative within HCZ led by Canada and Hayling Price (MBA/MPP 2016),that convenes researchers, policy-makers, funders, and practitioners to build on the work that has led to HCZ’s success. “Given the connections that we already have to high-performing organizations, we feel we can cultivate a pool of support that folks can tap into,” Owusu-Kesse explains. “There are core principles and accountability outcomes underlying this work, in addition to the networks, policy, and funding components that can help sustain this field.”

Metrics have always grounded HCZ’s operations; the organization gathers data across 600 areas to track annual results, from participation rates to academic performance to risky behaviors. In 2017, 97 percent of HCZ seniors went on to enroll in college; 1,100 have graduated since 2011.Those figures offer the hard data that prove HCZ’s approach works. So do the lives of its graduates. Owusu-Kesse coached basketball when he first came to HCZ; now those players are young men, out in the world. Falilou, a graduate of Boston College, is in finance; Deondre, a graduate of Hamilton College, is working in the startup world. “I still speak to them frequently, and they come back and talk to our students,” says Owusu-Kesse. “Seeing the Falilous and Deondres of the world, and how HCZ has changed their life’s trajectories, is very special. It’s a reminder of why I do this work.”

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