 Well good afternoon and welcome everyone you may be surprised to see me here I'm not Susan Collins I'm Liz Gerber Susan Collins is unfortunately stuck in traffic she'll be here as soon as she can but she asked me to introduce our distinguished speaker today so today is our final policy talks lecture of the academic year and without a doubt we are ending on a high note when we set out to create the slate of speakers for this year's academic policy talk series a leader in domestic policy seemed to be an important choice and we're actually thrilled today to have one of the University of Michigan's most distinguished alumni accept our invitation for this policy talk Melody Barnes was assistant to President Obama as director of the White House Domestic Policy Council from night excuse me from not that long 2009 to 2012 working with the administration on a broad portfolio of domestic policy issues including education health care federal and federal to state government relations and many other important areas she is now CEO of Melody Barnes Solutions and vice provost for global student leadership initiatives and a senior fellow at the Wagner School of Public Service at NYU Melody also serves as the senior director at the Albright Stonebridge Group which is a global strategy firm and she's on the board of directors of the Marguerite Casey Foundation she's currently chair of the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions which works to support the collaborative efforts of nonprofits business philanthropy and government to address problems with her remarkable breadth of distinguished policy experience our students and faculty have been looking forward to this visit all year and I'm very grateful for the generous time that Melody has already spent with our students and faculty she was a guest speaker in my class this afternoon and I know she met with a group of students who I saw were enrapped in conversation with her earlier today before we begin I'd like to remind the audience that at about 440 staff will come around and collect your question cards if anybody would like a question card there will be staff with extras as they come around with those as well they'll collect those around 440 and for those of you who are watching online you can also tweet your questions using the hashtag policy talks and then with my help our students Emily Ruska and Myra Lee will read your questions for the Q&A portion I think that's all for introduction so it's now with my great pleasure and honor to welcome Melody Barnes Melody well thank you so much for that terrific introduction and it's really wonderful to be here this afternoon I don't think I've been back in Ann Arbor in a number of years and last time I was down the street at the law school so it's terrific to be back I have already had a Zingerman's brownie so I'm in good shape but and had a wonderful time this afternoon already as Liz mentioned spending some time with one of the classes with her class as well as lunch with a really wonderful group of students which I have to say and some of this comes out of my experience at NYU as well it always makes I always have two feelings when I have experiences like that one of them is relief and that is because I am struck by just how smart and how savvy and the kinds of experiences that students here have already have so I feel relief that things are in good hands and the other one is a desire to both learn and to share and to share from the experiences that I've had but also to learn from you I don't think you will realize how much we gain from spending time hearing what you're thinking hearing about your approaches hearing about the experiences that you've already had and how that shapes the work that we're able to do when those of us who are wiser have to go back out into the world and do the work that we do and just going back to that sense of relief for a second and that comes from the experiences that I've had and all that I've been fortunate to see but all that I see that also gives me a sense of urgency and impatience about the kind of work that we have to do because of the significant challenges that sit in front of us today and there are the issues that we're all hearing about reading about thinking about I know I've had that experience already with many of you and I know that you're thinking about issues of economic mobility and social mobility and just how significant that is for our country right now I've talked to so many students already who have a clear passion for education at all levels and how do we ensure that we are educating every child and educating every child at a level of excellence that will allow them to fulfill their potential and to be able to compete in the world today know their issues of human rights and civil rights not only domestically but internationally how our girls and women being treated and able to fulfill their potential issues of natural resources and the environment mean the list goes on and on and on and I know for many of us and often times when I'm in communities around the country those issues seem daunting and the ways that we go about solving them seem to be calcified and ineffective but one of the things that I feel very passionately about is that there is a way forward and it involves the human capital and the development of the human mind that's happening here and involves what's happening around the country and some of the things that I want to talk about today that I'm lucky enough to have been involved in and that's why the title of my speech it refers to the anatomy of a public policy issue and I want to dissect that and talk about some of the tools and the way those tools are coming together to create the kind of change that I think is necessary I think my husband would probably laugh I don't I don't know that he saw the title of the speech because of the use of the word anatomy in my use of the word dissect because he actually jokes that I'm a frustrated doctor at heart we have landed on the fact that I have an instinct for healing because he said I know you got your MD when you got your JD when you were at Michigan but I think that that is an approach that I want to bring to what I want to talk about this afternoon and how do we go about solving the big complex hairy frustrating challenges that sit in front of us today as you all know I spent the first three years of this administration as the domestic policy advisor as the director of the Domestic Policy Council in the White House and I can still reflect back to that point in time after the election and after the president had asked me to serve in that capacity and we were in the transition period which I always think of and describe to people as an 87-day due diligence kind of M&A approach to taking over the biggest corporation in the world which is the United States government so how do you wrap your arms around everything that's happening in the government for this amazing peaceful transition that we have every four to eight years and we were in Chicago and it was December and the core members of the president's senior team had been put together and we were sitting there and getting a briefing on the economy and it's for those of you have read about it's when Christy Romer who was chair of the Council of Economic Advisors famously said to the president you know Mr. President this is your oh shit moment and but she meant by that was the fact that what we had seen in terms of the the infrastructure of our economy over the course of the campaign that had been crumbling was far far worse than we knew and we spent that day and many many others talking about the problems and the challenges that were in front of us and the president at that time challenged us not only to think about the substance of those problems but also to think about how we were going to approach those problems and to try and think about that and approach the challenges in a very very different way and as a result of doing that we started to focus on a series of things and for me in my portfolio that included everything from education to civil rights and a whole host of other domestic issues but the issue that I want to talk about a bit today is that of what we started to refer to as opportunity youth now many people most people talk about vulnerable youth many people refer to disconnected youth and what they are referring to what we're all referring to are this group about 6.7 million and in fact most people think that's an undercount well over 7 million 16 to 24 year olds who have been disconnected from the education system and disconnected from employment whether they have dropped out of high school whether they have finished high school with the GED but not gone on to get some kind of post-secondary credential whether that's a certificate or a two-year AA degree and also that they're not in the workforce in a significant way they may have some kind of lower level job but not what we think of as a family sustaining wage job not a job that you can actually live on support a family with and and grow and become a vibrant and vital member of the middle class but I specifically use the term opportunity youth because as we have been out and talking to young people around the country one of the things that we have noted is that this group of young people they don't see themselves as disconnected they don't see themselves as a chronic challenge and instead what they feel is a sense of hope that they can be a part of a broader society that they have something to contribute that they want to raise their families and be part of the US and the American community that and I believe having spent time with many of these young people that this is an untapped but vital resource for our country that they have much to contribute and intellectual gifts and a grit and a view of the world that can help us solve many of the challenges before us if in fact we are able to work with them and to support them and to bring them back into the fold of our country we know that this is a moral challenge for all the reasons that we could describe but at the same time what we felt it important to do as we start to look at this group of young people is to also talk about the economic challenge that's represented and what we know is that in 2011 if you stopped at that moment in time and you looked at this group of seven million young young people that this is there's a cost to the country of about 95 billion dollars annually to taxpayers by not addressing this challenge and if you look at the broader societal costs it's about a 252 billion dollar annual problem and if you look at the lifetime of those young people in 2011 dollars you're talking about 1.6 trillion dollars lost to the tax payer 4.75 trillion dollars lost to society by not addressing the fact that these young people are a part of or trying to engage in systems that are actually disconnected so the moral imperative the economic cost and the economic challenge how do we fix this I bet all of you can think of ways that we've tried to approach these kinds of problems and seeing these young men and young women over the years and we failed over and over and over if we still have are talking about seven million young people we're not doing something right so how do we approach this challenge what is the new way of doing business and those are the kinds of tools that I want to talk about today if we look at the challenge and we look and see what's happening around the country where we see green shoots where we see progress we have to recognize that it is the federal government but it's also state and local governments it's also the business community it's the philanthropic community and it's the nonprofit sector all working together cohesively that actually has a chance to make a difference and we are starting to see proof of that so I want to talk a little bit about how those sectors are working together but the bottom line for what I want to talk about today is that I believe that this strategy for approaching these complex persistent problems is a way that we can address so many of the challenges that we're facing right now the federal government engagement I'll start there when we started to look at this problem was one that we decided to tackle by bringing together a group of some of the most talented people in the country from across sectors everyone from I mentioned this earlier today you know Patty Stone cipher who led the Gates Foundation to a senior business executive at the Gap companies to Judith Rodin who used to be head of the University of Pennsylvania and now is at the Rockefeller Foundation to John John Bon Jovi who is an active member of our cultural society you know across every sector we brought together about 26 business leaders philanthropic leaders local government leaders to work with us and we said go out and we want you one to think about how are we going to galvanize resources to take on this challenge and two what's working what out there is actually working and they scoured the country they went community by community by community and they found instances of success in places like northern Kentucky and southern Ohio and the strive network and I don't know how many of you in here are aware of the work of the strive network you know strive has taken on this issue of cradle to to career education and they recognize their graduation rates in that region were substandard that not enough not enough children were prepared to start school and not enough of them were coming out of school ready for college not enough of them were persisting through some kind of post-secondary education and getting a good job and they took this problem on and within five years of the beginning of their work they noticed because they came together and identified goals that 43 of the 50 benchmarks that they had set out they were making progress on and then they decided ultimately to take their work and say we're not just going to do it here but we can replicate this all over the country and now that work is taking place in over 34 different cities and the District of Columbia around the country and we're seeing that kind of progress everywhere we turn what they actually were doing and what we found was happening in communities all over the country was something that people had named until an organization called FSG started to write about it and what they wrote about is what many people are now calling collective impact it is collaboration across sectors but it's doing that in a very very disciplined way it says we've got to come together and identify a common goal now we're all in relationships and you and your partner you and your spouse may think that you're all that you're both working it toward a common goal but it's not until you sit down and really work it out and talk about it that you may realize you know what we're actually rowing the wagons or rowing the boat in two different directions I mean we've all had that experience but when you sit down and talk about it and you've identified that goal you realize you know what now we all know that our goal is to get from Ann Arbor to Detroit so we actually have a shot of getting to Detroit as opposed to one of us ending up in Grand Rapids we also have to focus on the fact that as we're doing this work we have to measure and evaluate how we're getting from here to there we also have to have actions that are mutually reinforcing one another even as we work individually we have to make sure that our collective actions are getting us where we need to be and also to do that we have to have continuous communication again it's just like any relationship if you're not talking to one another you're surely not going to be able to achieve the goal that you set out and as programs are doing that in the instance that I'm talking about we have to have someone that's like an orchestra conductor that entity that is making sure that all these different entities are working together harmoniously in doing the things that I just mentioned those are the five elements of collective impact and that's what we found was actually working and making sure that in community after community they were actually making progress and at the same time the council looked at that they also did a deep dive on this issue of opportunity youth that led to an endorsement of collective impact that led them to move forward and say here are the recommendations we're making to the federal government for what the federal government can do performance pilots that required different agencies to work together to pool their resources in a way they hadn't done before by giving them that kind of flexibility also saying here the standards of evaluation here's the level of change that we need to see and we're starting to see that being executed around the country in 10 different performance pilots that are being used to advance this issue around these youth and all of that also happened surprisingly given the calcification we see over and over today through the 2014 appropriations process so congress actually endorsed and said this is the way that we're going to help the executive branch move in a better way to make making sure that we're approaching opportunity youth and solving this problem we also took on the social innovation fund which is a unique animal that we created in about 2010 it said smart things are happening in communities everything good is not happening in Washington so how do we support that how do we scale it how do we leverage it and how do we use federal resources that to galvanize private sector resources and in doing that we were able to put money into intermediary organizations and ultimately at this point into about 189 different nonprofits around the country that have leveraged over half a billion dollars and private sector resources to move these innovative ideas forward and now that innovation fund has said let's take on this issue of opportunity youth as well so federal in different ways the federal government thinking how they can approach this problem the other thing that we started to focus on is okay if the federal government is moving we also passed a big workforce bill what else do we have to do again not a single entity that can solve this problem the business sector and the philanthropic sector and the nonprofit sector all have to be involved so one of the things that Liz mentioned that I'm doing is that I am spending time chairing the Aspen forum for community solutions and that's a nonprofit organization that was created at the Aspen Institute with the intent of continuing to push this work even after the federal government council sunset it and what we've done at Aspen is that we've said okay collective impact is a model that we started to see some evidence of working so we want to continue to push to see if this really will work and at the same time let's take this issue this challenge around opportunity youth and see if we can use that model to continue to make big strides in helping and working with this population in doing that we now are working with 21 communities urban rural and tribal around the country all at different stages of their work from California to Detroit to Philadelphia to Hopi Arizona and the list goes on and working with them we're supporting some of the critical needs that they have around data and that backbone organization that I mentioned to make sure that they can move forward we know already that they are starting to see success you know you take what's happening in rural Maine for example and there it was a group of youth leaders youth leaders were talking 19 20 year olds who sat down and said one of our big challenges here is with foster care and youth that are aging out of foster care but they haven't completed school they're not in the workforce how do we get more resources to support them and how do we lift the age so that those resources can support them for a little bit longer until they're about 24 years old it was the young people there who led to the policy change and the main legislature passing an act to create the kind of change that they identified from their own experience as being absolutely critical and moving forward that social innovation fund that I mentioned now is specifically focusing on opportunity youth but also at Aspen we've received resources from the social innovation fund to specifically focus on boys and men of color and go out and support additional communities as they do this work all with highly rigorous evaluation so it isn't I kind of sort of feel like this might be working or we think we heard some great stories about what might be happening but rigorous evaluation to make sure that what we believe is true we're evaluating and understanding to be true so we can share that more broadly as I said philanthropy another critical sector the resources that philanthropy can put into these challenges is important but philanthropy is also struggling with how do we fund you know those one-year grants those three-year grants when you're taking on big hairy problems not long enough to solve the problem so what should funding cycles look like for philanthropy and what should the relationship between philanthropy and their grantees look like so that we aren't getting that and again this is something many of us have probably seen that since when you want to show off for the person that you're giving you money so you make it all look pretty and shiny you tie a bow around it but that's not really what's happening so how do we think differently about those relationships so philanthropy is actually a partner I see someone smiling and nodding philanthropy is actually a partner in the work as opposed to someone that stands off in the sidelines and that you call in once a year and show them a pretty report we've done that by including them in the leadership council that we have at the Aspen Institute actually sitting at the table with us going through the tough problems with us and bring together and we'll do this in a couple of weeks literally a couple of hundred funders to talk about some of these challenges and how we can all continue to move forward employers and the private sector particularly when you're dealing with this challenge and and with so many it is important to have the private sector at the table and often the private sector comes to the table and I was saying this in a class earlier today it's like well let's be mentors to young people absolutely important and when we do that in the best in class ways critical but we're talking about people who need jobs not just mentors so how do we help the private sector rethink the way that it's approaching this challenge and this problem and to do that in a way that they're putting resources forward in a way that not only helps them build those pathways but to do that in a way that they're spreading the good news and the importance of this issue to their colleagues so JPMorgan Chase Starbucks Bank of America are three of the key partners that we're working with that are putting substantial resources into this issue but also are starting to think about many of you may have heard about the work that Starbucks is doing we're going to hire these young people and not only are we going to do it at Starbucks but we're also going to talk about those vendors that we work with who are part of our supply chain and say we want you to do this too that's the crew beyond the creation of two jobs or 10 jobs or 12 jobs that's hundreds and thousands of jobs and the creation on the demand side for the kind of young people in the training that young people need on the supply side mixed with that is also the need to change perception and this is one of the things that I've seen over and over and over again people are willing to believe that there's that one exceptional person and we've all seen the TV you know the TV news clip or we've read about it in the paper we've read some magazine article and there's the young person who came out of hard times and has gone on to college and is doing well and everybody cheers and says wow isn't he exceptional isn't she exceptional but six million exceptional young people society seems to be unwilling to believe that that's possible but it is and part of what we're doing is trying to change the perception of the way society and employers start to look at and think about these young people because if the perception doesn't change who would hire the person that they don't believe that they believe can't do the job so we've started to work with the private sector and foundations to create what we call the grads of life campaign and I want to just give you a sense of an ad that we've done directly targeted at HR leaders and private sector leaders as we want to just start getting people to think a little bit differently about these young people so that's just part of a larger campaign that we have underway to get people to think differently about these young people and as I mentioned well she's running for president by the way in case you miss that and now there's are actually there's a reason why that came up next the grads of life campaign is doing this work and one of their major partners is in fact the Clinton Foundation and having Hillary Clinton on the Daily Show you know what the viewership of the Daily Show looks like go out and say to John Stuart this is a group of seven million young people and we've got to take on this challenge and John Stuart is like what are you talking about and she explains it again we're looking for lots of different avenues lots of different venues to get people to start to think about and recognize the challenge and ultimately to start thinking about these young people in a very very different way the final sector that I want to talk about our communities and young people themselves again the perception has made this more challenging the idea that we used to talk about disconnected youth and talk about young people as though they were broken as though they were in in in total the challenge or the problem created the sense that who are these people and how do we engage with them do we want to engage with them is it safe to engage with them why would we want to work with them or sit beside them and that's a microcosm of a larger challenge that we often have as we are working collaboratively to solve big problems in many cases we don't involve or engage the communities themselves that we say we want to help and to support we don't value what those communities can bring to the table much less the policymaking table that's an elite table right no no you have to bring the very people in the communities that you want to work with to the table to understand what the challenge and the problem is so that you can go about with their support with their assistance with them as partners actually fixing it who's a better expert on the life of an opportunity youth than an opportunity youth who better understands what they face than those young people themselves and so we've worked very very hard to ensure that on a national level and on a local level those young people are sitting at the table with us and as they say nothing about us without us and we take that very very seriously so at Aspen they are members of our leadership council our collaboratives have them sitting at the table with them I mentioned to you a few minutes ago the work that's taking place in Maine that was driven by propelled by young people coming out of their own experiences and catching the ear and the attention of the legislators and others in that community we also have a youth leadership track to help young people continue to develop their own leadership skills and in fact just two weeks ago we hired one of our youth leaders to work with us at Aspen so if we're going to talk the talk we have to walk the walk as well and all of that has made our work much much richer we've also put together a collective impact forum and that forum we did in partnership with the organization FSG that first started writing about collective impact and the United Way and other partners around the country to create a learning community to create a hub where communities that are doing this work can talk to one another because what we often found is that literally communities 50 miles apart a hundred miles apart not to mention a country on each coast didn't know what the other were doing and as a result of that communities were making the same mistakes over and over we could leap frog past that if people are talking to one another if the tools that we're finding are necessary we can put in one central place if we could use technology to scale what we're trying to do much more quickly and to ensure that learning community was a robust one and now you know we started out and we were hopeful in the first year that we might find 5,000 communities that wanted to be a part of it and we're well over 10,000 and we also are talking to communities in Canada and communities in other parts of the world as they use this strategy for change and specifically many of them are also focusing on this issue of opportunity youth so I'll close by saying this one of the things that people often ask me when they hear I'm doing this work or spending some of my time doing this work in local communities is you know does this mean that you don't think that the federal sector works anymore does this mean that you think everything should be focused on the state and local level and what I tell them is no I am a very firm believer and you don't really have to look much further than my resume to understand I'm a firm believer that the federal government has to work it has to be effective it has to be smart and we have to work to make sure that we're getting the federal government to that place but as I said earlier there won't be a single-shot solution to a complex complicated Harry problem we have to have all sectors working collaboratively and working together if we're going to achieve the kind of change that we want to achieve and that's why I believe so strongly that we need the robustness of a collective impact strategy if we're going to get ourselves to where we want to be and we have to use data and evidence we have to work closely in community we have to bring those pieces together we have to make sure that the private sector is at the table and that we are all using a language that we can understand if we're going to meet the challenges that sit in front of us but what I also believe seeing the things that I've seen community after community after community is that we can have the kind of success that we want and that we need we can solve these problems if we work collaboratively and with the benefit of the kind of education that many of you are getting here today you will be the essential fuel in each of those sectors to make sure that we get there so thank you very very much and I look forward to engaging in a conversation with you all thank you okay Ms. Barnes for our first question from the audience oh hi my name is Myron Lee and I'm a first-year MPP student and again I'm really passionate about poverty alleviation under the subgroups of food security and women economic empowerment for our first question audience members really struck by your optimism and sense of possibility embedded in your vision however how should we reconcile that with the despair and sense of crisis that frames the black lives matter movement because both our views are centered on the future of opportunity youth absolutely I will start out by speaking to a personal experience that I had I am I guess it was about a year and a half ago and I was speaking in Brooklyn at a youth build function and I don't know if many of you know youth build it's a wonderful organization that is led by woman named Dorothy Stoneman that focuses on the opportunity youth population and helping young men and young women get their GEDs and also workforce training as well as other services that they need and I was introduced at that event by a young man who literally was thrown away as a baby literally he was found in the trash as an infant and he went through as you can imagine having started his life that way many of the trials and tribulations you know engagement with the juvenile justice system in and out of school all of those things and ultimately though found himself in youth build and standing there is someone who had gone on to get his high school degree was going on to a post-secondary program was working and saw himself and was actively a member of his community it is the kind of despair that I think that you are speaking to and that we see over and over and over again but at the same time what had captured him what had surrounded him were individuals who believed that his life had value and beyond that idea that his life had value also were bringing structure bringing a best-in-class approach to the the solutions to the challenges that were in front of him to help move him forward and it isn't just that young man again but I've seen that over and over and over again and I've talked to young people who have said to me straight up it's like I let a thug life young people who have said I as I sit here I at one point could have hurt you and it would have meant nothing to me and yet when given those opportunities when given a sense that they were valued that there was hope for them that there was a pathway for them we're able to not only help turn their lives around but want to do that and to reach back and to grab others and to do and to do the same and as I said to be actively involved in their communities and actively involved in the solution so the despair is real the challenges are real but at the same time there are approaches and there are ways that we can work with these young people to at the same time start to turn their lives around and also create those same opportunities for others but the I think part of the key is to make sure that they are involved that their voices are heard and that they are also seen and respected as leaders as part of that movement that we're not just doing something to them or for them but we're doing something with them to create that kind of change thank you for that very thoughtful response and thank you for coming to speak with us again today my name is Emily Ruska I'm a first year MPP here at Ford we have another question here from the audience in addition to the examples that you've offered as part of collective impact what are particularly promising practices for engaging youth activists and student voices to influence youth policy to create opportunity in this historically marginalized population well one example that I've seen is the Council of Young Leaders and they've actually also created an organization called Youth United and this is an extraordinary group of young people who are moving forward and driving this they're they're driving the progress themselves and their group of us that call ourselves the circle of allies we are there we're allies for them we're supporting them as they do this but they've articulated what their goals are how they want to engage and how they want to be how they want to be engaged they are saying we want to sit at these tables with you and I'm seeing more and more of these kinds of organizations and also quite frankly a new way of thinking about leadership and you know it requires I I will be 51 in a couple of weeks it requires I think a new way of thinking about leadership it isn't this hierarchical you know I'm old and I'm wise so now I sit here at the tippy top of this pyramid but it is a collective table it is a relational frame for leadership that's using lots of new tools to communicate with people all over the country and indeed all over the world and it is respect for as I said before the kind of knowledge that people share that come out of it comes out of experience and I'm seeing more and more of these organizations while at the same time inside you know our workplace inside many of the organizations that we have that are very structured we're also inviting and bringing those young people in so they can be part of the change that we seek to create so they're a lot of exciting opportunities for young leaders that I'm seeing all over the country and I empathize with you guys I know how far this is too. Thank you for your patience. Okay so what are some of the most effective policy solutions to poverty and opportunity youth that you have served from your own professional experience? Well I think I know from talking to a number of you today that you are very very passionate about education and I continue to believe that that's an absolutely critical element in addressing the the challenges that a lot of opportunity youth have. I mean there's everything from the work that's happening around reconnection and we're seeing the the birth and growth of reconnection centers around the country to bring young people who dropped out of school back in into school so they can finish secondary and move forward. We're also seeing some really interesting pathways and best of class efforts coming out of organizations like Jobs for the Future and others that are focused on early college high school for example and the importance of apprenticeships and the way that we build that into the secondary education experience so that young people are finishing high school and some of them have an AA degree when they finish their complete I remember just recently I'm talking to a young woman I believe who finished knows young man who graduated and got his AA degree a week before he got his high school diploma and that break between high school and post-secondary can often be you know it's a break for some people it's a gulf for others and trying to prevent young people from sliding down in the crack there but move more seamlessly on to post-secondary education that we're seeing as being a very smart way forward and that's embedded in some of the the work that is being reviewed on Capitol Hill I think the recently passed Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act which increased over doubled the amount of resources that local communities can use for out-of-school young adults and giving them an opportunity to get workforce training and to move into those family sustaining wage jobs and also increasing the amount of time that they have to qualify for those jobs so there are a whole host of things that I could go on with but that's also what we're examining in the work that we're doing at the Aspen Institute because what we're trying to do is we're learning from each of those communities some focusing on foster care some focusing on juvenile justice and the list goes on what are the policy changes that we need to see to make these efforts more successful and we're in the nascent stages of our work but we're starting to learn from that and we started out by bringing on a third-party evaluator so all through our work we can look at what's working and what we're learning and then move that into the policy bloodstream and move policy accordingly. Our next question here is sort of a mix of questions that we've gotten from the audience so research has demonstrated lifelong impacts of youth unemployment on economic mobility and earning potential involvement in the criminal justice system as well as other social impacts. How do these experiences shape opportunities for these opportunity youth and also what are some of the most cost-effective solutions that you've seen to this challenge and how scalable are they? Wait and I'm sorry. So basically the question of youth unemployment having lifelong impacts on youth many of these opportunity youth that we're speaking of today and how has their engagement with institutions such as the criminal justice system in their experience of unemployment itself affecting the opportunities that they are able to engage with moving forward and what are some cost-effective solutions that you've seen? Sure and again a significant problem we're seeing the loss of skills or the inability to acquire skills when you have young people that aren't being employed and that's such a significant problem this is not limited to the opportunity you cohort but one of the problems that we saw coming out of the recession because so many young people weren't being hired they weren't getting the opportunity to gain skills at an early enough stage in their career that it would allow them to be successful as they kind of the natural arc of their career took place and that's only compounded when you were talking about opportunity youth that often also have substantial substantially inadequate educational experiences and opportunities and then compounded even further when they've been incarcerated in many instances education coming to or slowing down or coming to a halt coming out not having the next necessary reconnection opportunities the rates of recidivism and kind of the list of I think many of the things that we you know about on and on and on and I've seen some interesting things that are taking place I have a friend that I worked with a number of years ago he David Domenici started with his colleague James Foreman the Maya Angelou public charter school and after getting the school up and running one of the things that David is focused on now is improving education inside of our juvenile justice system and you know there's obviously a debate and work that has to happen reasons why youth are being incarcerated in the first place and how they get there but recognizing that so many young people are there how do we improve educational outcomes for them there and he's working systemically with several different states to try and address that challenge so we see things like that that are underway and also as I mentioned some of the communities that we're working with are very specifically focused on ways that we can work with employers and have them think differently about young people who are coming out of the juvenile justice system and what they're hiring practices will look like and I've talked to significant multinational companies huge companies that are starting to think okay we know this is a problem and we understand how this problem ramifies throughout the system you come out you know rates of recidivism go up you know if you've got children your inability to support your children and quite frankly if you're also on the business side you know the lack of income that means that communities are not growing that people aren't spending are buying etc so they're thinking how do we adjust our policies so that we're hiring more young people who have had these experiences so there are a number of things like that that we're starting to see particularly as we focused on the juvenile justice system to try and address the problem there is a root problem however that we have to tackle which is how so many young people end up there in the first place and as you know I was talking the other day to Anna DeVere Smith and many of you may know her work and she calls it the womb to prison pipeline and what happened so early and what we see literally in you know lack of justice are a great reading you know what the criminalization of young people in school that ultimately is putting them directly on a path into prison and we also have to address that that's a very significant problem for our country and for our communities this is a two-prong question the first is what are some specific ways in which opportunity youth cost taxpayers cost taxpayers yes there's you know we've talked some about the juvenile justice system and the cost and the cost to the to the system there we're also talking about loss of tax revenue I mean if you aren't working then you in many ways you aren't you're paying some taxes but you're not paying a whole host of other taxes we're also looking at what's happening to the health care system if you aren't working and your income is below a certain level the way that you acquire and get health care so when you think about many of the the programs that are in place and I think appropriately so to help people and provide a safety net there will be fewer people that needed that safety net if we strengthened our education system and if we got people into families wage sustaining jobs so those are some of the the costs to tax to taxpayers then they're the broader societal costs mean literally just loss loss of earning power and that's why I mentioned those two numbers and the second is so much larger than the first the first one what does it cost taxpayers the second one what is society losing and there's a report and I'll flip and remember the the name of it for anyone who wants to see it that we did when I was at the White House my friend John Bridgeland who was George W. Bush's domestic policy advisor really helped to lead the effort in getting that report done to look at what the economics are of this challenge because we wanted to have that data so I'm gonna find the name of that yes please thank you the second part to the question is given the pervasiveness of isms racism classism etc aside from commercials what are other sectors doing to change the mindsets about opportunity you sure and before I answer that so the name of this report is the economic value of opportunity you so it's the economic value of opportunity and it goes through that one example I can think of I have a friend Travian Shorter's who was an official at the Knight Foundation who is now running an organization called be me and they specifically are focusing on boys and men of color and the fact that as opposed to seeing these young people as a challenge as a problem as a liability as a cost that we start to see these young men as assets and not only do we see them as assets what he's also putting on the table are the facts that prove their assets as entrepreneurs as business owners as civic leaders and in fact Travian and Ben jealous who used to run the NAACP just edited a book of essays by I think all of these are by black men talking about their experiences and the ways that they have contributed to society to their community to their country and the over the course of this next year they are launching an all-out campaign specifically focused on perception change how do we get the country to stop repeating and hardening this narrative that has people seeing in this instance young black men as just a cost and just a problem as opposed to vital members of society that are adding and that are contributing and so that's one example of what I'm seeing I know that the my brother's keeper effort that the president launched a little over a year ago includes in it a specific focus on perception change and in many ways it is the thorniest and naughtiest of all the problems that we have and it sits at the base of so many of the other challenges that we're trying to address I have a question here from Twitter it they ask is it possible to make better use of our workforce development funds the Twitter user also indicates that stimulus dollars helped but that is not a systematic change right I mean in stimulus dollars we knew as we were developing the policy that we couldn't do many things or anything that would have a tail because those are resources that would that would run out so I refer back to the workforce innovation and opportunity act which was you know that rare piece of bipartisan legislation that passed Congress and was signed into law last July and that includes significant resources for opportunity youth and for communities to take on this issue of opportunity youth I was mentioning a little bit of that it allows I think communities to use up to about 75% of their resources to focus out on or part of their resources to focus on young people and young adults who fall into this cohort and you know that's a that in and of itself can be a really important piece of policy we're now in the regulation writing phase and just starting with to see implementation but it's something I know that both the Secretary of Labor Tom Perez Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker and Arnie Duncan the Secretary of Education are all very very focused on and we're hopeful that that legislation having learned the lessons of the Workforce Innovation Act we can improve upon and do some smart things I think the other thing that's important that sits there is that there's a lot in there for evaluation and we have to understand what really is working and what is not and it had that has to be a continuous process so we can adjust accordingly the next question is you mentioned that Detroit is one of the communities you work with currently under the Aspen Institute what do you think about its recent experience in bankruptcy and being served under the emergency management and other ongoing challenges what strategies do you hope to see happen each rate in order for the city to move forward successfully well one of the things I'm excited about and I'll go back for a second I remember early on probably 20 2009 2010 and I was in the administration and was invited to an attended a meeting in Detroit that in many ways was I think an example of collective impact I mean it really brought together a range of different sectors at the table to do to think about what the plan would be for moving Detroit forward and that group or much of that group I think has held together and that's been in critical to get Detroit to where it is as it's you know coming out of the coming out of bankruptcy and focusing on the way forward I think you know as within every community it it's complex mean there are kind of land management issues there are cultural issues and by that I mean there are culture and can be such an important driver to economic development and I think people are focused on ways to use what's here and what's rich about the community to be able to help create economic development you know we saw the preservation of the artwork that staying in Detroit you know all of those things I think people consider to be important also you know I go back and I give the administration that was part of credit for preserving jobs in the auto industry and making sure that that remained important to the economic structure of the city and indeed the region and the country so I think there are a number of different ways that the plan is moving forward but it has involved philanthropic leaders it's involved business leaders it's involved you know economists and academics and others thinking about what that plan should be and the fact that everyone has to work together to be able to to move it forward so you know I'm excited and hopeful about what's happening in Detroit I know several of the people who have been a part of that and local Michigan foundations that have been a part of that and I think it's really critical that the table was set to include so many different sectors and actors so you've spoken at a number of intersections about the importance of involving the private sector in all of these efforts and this question from the audience speaks to that they're wondering we're seeing a lot of movement towards corporate social responsibility a lot of major corporations are implementing departments for that are you seeing it some folks are commenting that this might appear to be a trend or a fad do you see this as a trend or something that is more sustainable in a real movement in the corporate community that will be continued long into the future I I do and what I believe and hope I'm seeing is maturation of corporate social responsibility because there's a form of it that's you know we've got our private sector foundation our corporate foundation and we give money you know we're the Melody Barnes Corporation that builds widgets and we give money to X cause it has nothing to do with our widgets which is great you're giving money to a good cause what I think is happening more and more now is we're seeing kind of CSR 2.0 or 3.0 by the best in class companies and what they're doing is saying okay what is it that we do and what is it that we're really good at let's use our resources on that how do we take our existing assets and do something good for our community because we know that and we understand it better than anyone and you know I would use Starbucks as an example and I was talking about the work that they're doing with their supply chain mean that is CSR but they also see that as a spark as a smart business model and the support that they're providing educational support for their workers you know I can go through a list of others I mean you look at the 10,000 small businesses 10,000 women-owned businesses effort by Goldman Sachs again they're thinking about what is it that they do and how can they provide that kind of support in a corporate social responsibility context but building on what they're already best in class at so I don't think that it's a fad I do think and hope that companies are starting to think more smartly about the way that they engage because as I talk to people who are doing this work what they're saying is it's more sustainable we have more of our folks engaged more of our people involved we see the benefit to our company when we're doing it that way and it's less the heart of our businesses over here and our corporate responsibility work is over there and that's a nice thing that we do and instead seeing those two things coming closer and closer together so that's what I am seeing and hopeful for thank you so this is going to be our penultimate question Myra will take us home in a second here this second to last question will be about your time in the Obama administration and this person is wondering if you could speak to your experience there and what perhaps surprised you the most about that job chairing the DPC my experience there I am hesitating because I could cover a lot of territory everybody I think one of the things that I or some of the things I was surprised most about you know from the small to the large I mean when you walk in the White House literally day one so it's inauguration day and everybody's outside and there's a parade and everybody's happy and their balls that night and I remember going in and being freezing cold and you know fighting my way through the parade to get in and literally the phones are ringing it's like I don't know where the bathroom is and the phones are ringing and because the assistance to the president all had to show up and go into the building on that day and there's the sense that it it just it never ever it doesn't stop and what your role is in maintaining that peaceful transition that we talk about but it really is quite spectacular when you think about what we do after every election cycle it's also the sense particularly at the White House as compared to the rest of the executive branch how tiny it is I mean literally it is a physically small space but also the number of people who are working there it's a small number of people who are there and closest to the president and trying to act on both what he has promised and what his goals are and respond to what the big challenges are and that requires a real respect for and it's something I think this country is lost and it's sad a real respect for those who are career bureaucrats I mean those bureaucrats taken on pejorative but people who have been there year after year administration after administration who have real expertise and can act on the the big and the small that come about every single day and you're struck by what it takes to make that happen because there are so few of us who are literally in in that building so that's striking I think the other thing coming out of the experience is of the range of policy experiences that I've had it is there is no other place to get a clear 360 degree view of what it takes to get policy done and you know I was there I was the domestic policy director and I worked with communications people and you know national security and homeland and you know on legislative affairs on and on and the decisions that you think have nothing to or you might think have nothing to do with what you have to do could have absolutely everything to do with what you're able to execute on when you're able to execute on it and how you're able to do so and I deeply appreciate having had that experience as well and then there's just such a strong sense of what we do in this country and our form of government and how special it is and for all the criticism for all the frustration we have this is a pretty amazing system that we've created and we have to refine it we have to improve it and requires individuals to go in with the best possible motivations and the desire to get something done and to compromise and work across lines but you know as my boss you know Senator Kennedy said to me once sitting over at his kitchen table when it works it is amazing and I have such a deep appreciation for that having worked in a couple of different branches of government and come out of this administration okay for our last question this is from Twitter any chance that will be able to see you back in the White House specifically during specifically specifically if the president is Hillary Clinton I'm wondering if my husband wrote that question to make sure it wasn't going to happen I have had spectacular experiences working in government you know when I left Senator Kennedy I thought I'm done I love working for him and you know no matter where you are ideologically I was just at the Institute Kennedy Institute opening his Institute opening two weeks ago and there was Trent Lott, Tom Dashel, John McCain, Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey you know every part of the ideological spectrum speaking and talking about this man and what he's done and I love that John I'm thought I'm done I'll never work in a White House never gonna work on a campaign oops so and I went into the White House and it was just it's the hardest thing I've ever done and the most amazing thing that I've ever done but I'm done and I'm I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything not one thing I learned a lot and I want to take what I've learned and I want to use it in the ways that I'm doing it now and I love the the multiplicity of things that I'm doing in the different teams I'm able to build and work within the communities I'm able to work in and I'm excited to support the federal government but from out here thank you well I'm so sorry I wasn't here to introduce our special guest but I'm delighted that I heard not only her really interesting presentation but also her very thoughtful and candid remarks in response to all of your questions and so let me at this time first thank all of you for joining us for your again very thoughtful questions this is the last of our policy talks for this year and I have to say a really wonderful way to end the series but we hope that you will join us back here again next year but before then we have a continuation of the conversation with the reception just outside of those doors so please stay and join us for that but please also join me in a very special final round of thanks to Melody Barnes thank you that was wonderful