Executive Director, Grand Circle Foundation Community Advisory Group
If you ask Bithiah Carter, when it comes to giving kids in disadvantaged neighborhoods the tools for success, we've been looking at it all wrong. "When I think of children today in some of the communities that I'm working with, we don't recognize some of the assets that are around them and try to boost those assets," she says. "I'm amazed when people talk to children as though they don't have the wherewithal to be successful. I don't understand how we kill children's dreams. And we do it in so many subtle ways. We tell them they come from bad communities, we tell them they come from bad parents, we tell them they go to bad schools, we tell them they have no future. How is that possible?"
Bithiah came to that understanding by, to some extent, living the opposite. She grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, with "two great parents" and two brothers, surrounded by a large circle of friends and educated by "amazingly caring teachers," as she puts it. "Not only did my teachers care, they had high expectations for me," she recalls. "Children live up to their expectations. If you have a high expectation for a child and what they're going to do and how they're going to succeed, then the child will live up to that."
Bithiah's idyllic upbringing came to an abrupt end when she was 19. Her father died suddenly of a massive heart attack, changing her life forever. She dropped out of college (though she later went back and earned her degree) and went to work to help support her family. She did not let this tough life circumstance embitter her, however. Instead, she stayed positive, characteristically making the best of the situation. "My parents instilled resiliency in me," she says. "I had to live up to a higher calling. I couldn't disappoint my father."
The Road to Boston
Resourceful and entrepreneurial, Bithiah worked at "a number of things" and takes pride in the fact that her family was able to keep their home and stay together. The young woman wanted to experience more of the world, however, and eventually moved to New York, where she began working on Wall Street. There, she came to the notice of Albert Gordon, the man who rebuilt the Kidder Peabody investment firm after the 1929 stock market crash. Under his mentorship, Bithiah found herself on the 17th floor of a Manhattan skyscraper, handling institutional equity sales. "Being an African-American whose great-great-grandmother was a slave, I thought, 'Is this really happening?'" she says.
Still, she wanted more out of life, so she began volunteering through New York Cares, an organization that facilitates volunteer activities in local New York neighborhoods. Bithiah focused her volunteerism on the third grade class of a local public high school. "It's amazing to see the third graders come in as babies, and when they leave third grade, they've been shaped into little people," she says. "It's transformational."
There was another reason why it was important to Bithiah to work with the schoolchildren. "It can't be just white people helping black people. It can't be just white people who are the role models," she says. "I felt it was important to be visible, to show what we can do."
By this time, Bithiah had met the man who would become her husband, and when his father developed pancreatic cancer, the couple made the decision to return to Ohio, to be near him. It was a decision that lasted barely a year. Bithiah was eager to return to New York, but she and her husband, Andrew Hoffman, settled on Boston instead, as what she calls a "compromise city," where she got a job at the John Hancock insurance company.
When the couple decided to move back to New York at last, Bithiah quit her job—only to discover on her last day of work that her husband had just received a big promotion. "I was like, 'Are you kidding me?'" she laughs. Always a positive thinker, she took the change in plans in stride and decided to take some time off to determine where her life course might lead next.
Launching Into the Nonprofit World
She tried substitute teaching but, frustrated with school bureaucracies, she moved on to become program director for the Girls' Coalition, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization. The coalition was the brainchild of the leaders of various Boston-area nonprofits concerned with the welfare of young girls, such as the Big Sister Association, the Girl Scout Council, and others. It was her introduction to the nonprofit world in Boston … and also to issues relating to the gender gap and the obstacles faced by young women.
It was a perspective that would come in handy at her next position, as senior director of Community Impact at the United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley (UWMB). Her area of concentration was Increasing Youth Opportunity, where she led program development for UWMB's Today's Girls ... Tomorrow's Leaders initiative. There, a visionary by the name of Marilyn Anderson Chase became her mentor and inspiration. "Marilyn didn't want this to be just a charitable organization," Bithiah says. "She wanted it to be transformational. Our goal was to make people see their impact on girls' social and emotional development and how to set expectations, to really empower young women to be responsible for their own lives."
As the organization's priorities changed, however, Bithiah began to consider her next career move. A lack of focus among black philanthropists and positive images for blacks led her to found New England Blacks in Philanthropy (NEBIP), an affinity group of black philanthropists, trustees, and staffs of grant-making organizations in the New England region.
The Community Advisory Group: A Job She Didn't Know She Wanted
It was while Bithiah was leading NEBIP that Grand Circle Foundation began seeking an executive director for its Community Advisory Group (CAG). A friend and mentor, Robert Lewis, [link to Gusty Leader profile] vice president for programs at The Boston Foundation, was already a member of the CAG, and while Bithiah was busily recommending others for the job, Robert was encouraging her to apply for it herself. At last, one headhunter to whom Bithiah had referred "five or six" people for the job said to her, "You know, I think they really want to meet you."
Bithiah was already well aware of Grand Circle Foundation co-chairs Harriet and Alan Lewis. "They have a reputation for strong leadership and trying to push people beyond their boundaries," she says. "Their values sometimes scare people. It's a kind of radical love. They push people to understand themselves, because once you love yourself, then you can truly love others."
Persuaded at last, Bithiah went in for an interview with the vice president of the Foundation, Maury Peterson—and "kind of fell in love." The conversation lasted for well over two hours, after which Bithiah met Harriet Lewis and liked her immediately. The job was hers.
An Ambitious Vision for the Future
The CAG was organized in 1999 as a forum in which Boston nonprofit leaders could share ideas and work together to improve their organizations and further their collective mission. The group meets regularly, despite their busy schedules, and each of the organizations is supported with funds from Grand Circle Foundation.
In 2011, Harriet and Alan launched an ambitious new plan for the CAG. Between 2012 and 2018, they hope to measurably increase high school and college graduation rates among students from Boston's Allston, Dorchester, Mattapan, and Roxbury neighborhoods who participate in CAG programs. The goals of this initiative are:
- Graduate all juniors from Allston, Dorchester, Mattapan, and Roxbury served by the CAG by June 2018.
- Increase the college graduation rate of students from Allston, Dorchester, Mattapan, and Roxbury served by the CAG by 10% by June 2016.
- Graduate 85% of 9th-grade students from Allston, Dorchester, Mattapan, and Roxbury served by the CAG by June 2014.
On the job for only one week at the time of her interview for this article, Bithiah nevertheless has a clear image of her personal role in meeting these goals. To her, leadership is a "bottom up responsibility," in which her task is to "remove obstacles and empower people to do their jobs."
Her Wall Street training will help her provide the framework, by setting clear goals, objectives, and outcomes, as well as the metrics by which progress can be measured. "Most people's perception is that nonprofit means non-business," she sighs. "But when you have big issues to tackle, you must run your organization like a business. After all, if we can put a man on the moon, why can't we lower the dropout rate?"
An active athlete who enjoys running, biking, and "playing any sport I can," Bithiah plans to stay active in her job, too, working in the field with CAG organizations and the young people they serve. "You have to be involved in order to be engaged," she points out. "People can give reports, but if you don't see how people live and their environment, how can you help them?"
To her, serving Boston's Allston, Dorchester, Mattapan, and Roxbury neighborhoods isn't just a matter of social justice: it's an urgent matter of national security. "We can't afford not to educate people," she declares. "I don't care about race, color, or creed—if we leave people behind, we won't have the United States of America any more. Unless everyone gets an education and an opportunity to succeed, we risk our national security and our way of life."
It all comes down to focusing on the positive and pointing out the assets of each community. "These children are too often told how horrible they are. It's time to flip it," she says. She looks forward to working with the "special, amazing" leaders of the CAG to do just that. "I hope to serve the group well," she says modestly.
She's already off to a great start.
Featured in our December 2011 E-Newsletter. Read the full issue here.