A conversation with Suzanne Doornbos Kerbow as she bids farewell to Polk Bros. Foundation
Earlier this year, we announced that Polk Bros. Foundation’s Program Director for Education Suzanne Doornbos Kerbow — who designs and leads grantmaking in the Foundation’s Education program area — will retire after 35 years of dedication to advancing education in Chicago. Suzanne first joined the Foundation as its second employee in 1989 and has worked tirelessly to help improve the quality of public education in Chicago.
We sat down with Suzanne this week to reflect together on her career, what she’s learned along the way and what keeps her hopeful.
As you think about your work over the years, what key moments stand out to you the most? What are you especially proud of?
I’d say that the most important project I’ve taken a lead on is Polk Bros. Foundation’s Full-Service Schools Initiative, which was built on research showing the positive impact that locating programs and services for students and families in schools has on expanding their learning opportunities, reducing barriers to learning, and ensuring parents feel connected to the school and have a voice in what takes place there. It’s such a powerful strategy for ensuring that BIPOC students from economically-challenged families benefit from the same resources that White students from middle- and higher-income families take for granted.
The initiative’s success led the Foundation to take a leadership role in the Campaign to Expand Community Schools in Chicago, which raised funds from foundations and corporations that Chicago Public Schools matched to start more than 100 community schools in fewer than five years. When the Campaign came to an end, instead of simply letting the work fade away, the Foundation helped establish the Federation for Community Schools, which carried the vision forward, and it now supports ACT Now, which is doing vital advocacy work.
Reflecting on all that, I’m proud of the commitment the Foundation made to this work alongside other important efforts to improve principal and teacher effectiveness and help CPS high school students attend and graduate from college.
What’s something you’ve learned over the course of your career that you’d like to pass along to others?
I was impressed early on by Toby Herr’s work at an organization she ran called Project Match. She found that helping someone with little or no work history move into a job required a lot of patience and commitment. Few if any of the individuals Project Match worked with stayed at their first job very long and they typically required multiple placements and support to remain consistently employed. I learned that it takes a long time and a lot of small steps for someone to make any major life change and that, as a funder, I needed to be patient and appreciate the process.
I learned from Don Moore, the head of Designs for Change, and the folks at the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research, that schools benefit when parents develop strong relationships with teachers and have a say in what happens at their children’s schools. Bringing many perspectives and personalities together can often make Local School Councils feel challenging for all participants, but inclusive, school-based decision-making results in much more successful outcomes for students.
I also learned that while it’s important for organizations to be clear about what they’re seeking to accomplish and how they’ll know if they’ve been effective, demonstrating their impact can be very challenging. Counting participants or the number of times they are engaged in an activity is straightforward, whereas measuring qualitative change is much more complicated. For anyone entering this field, I’d encourage them to understand that it’s a balance. While funders may want clear-cut data on impact, sometimes the most profound effects of a program are qualitative and can’t be reduced to numbers.
What brings you the most hope for Chicago’s future, and what are your hopes for your own future?
As I pack up my office this week, I’ve been looking back at reports and white papers I’ve kept for many years. And it’s kind of sad, because the issues highlighted then are pretty much the same today, although some are much worse. I’m hopeful that focusing more sharply on addressing systemic racism will help Polk Bros. Foundation and others have a greater impact on eliminating a myriad of disparities going forward.
I’m also hopeful that more people will pay attention to and act on research showing that students in schools focusing on academics and social emotional learning do better academically than students in schools solely focusing on academics. And I’m hopeful that Chicago public schools and the district at large will learn to work more productively with nonprofits and eliminate the administrative roadblocks that discourage them from making a contribution.
Finally, I’m hopeful that I can continue to play a part in expanding the resources needed to sustain and grow Illinois’ community school movement.
