Interview with Eugena Oh: Judge of the ‘We Have a Dream’ Vocal+ Challenge

Eugena Oh, CEO of the"I Have a Dream" Foundation, talks key moments that led her to the nonprofit, the legacy of founder Eugene Lang, and what she'll be looking for as judge of the "We Have a Dream" Vocal+ Challenge.

By Vocal Curation TeamPublished 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 21 min read
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In a society stunted by intergenerational poverty, Eugena Oh and the "I Have a Dream" Foundation are leveling the field by offering holistic, individualized support for disadvantaged youths and families across the globe. Inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, the nonprofit empowers children (“Dreamers”) in under-resourced communities to graduate from college by equipping them with the skills and knowledge to succeed in postsecondary school, along with tuition support to aid in removing financial barriers.

Deriving from similar King-sized inspirations, the Vocal+ "We Have a Dream" Challenge, supported by "I Have a Dream" and to be judged by Ms. Oh, invites entrants to share the steps they're going to take to foster kindness and inclusivity in 2022. Vocal will be awarding $5,000 to the winner, along with a matching donation to the "I Have a Dream" Foundation.

Amidst her busy schedule, Ms. Oh found the time to sit down and chat with the Vocal Curation Team about her life before "I Have a Dream," her experiences working with the philanthropic legend Eugene Lang, the nonprofit's foundation and trajectory, and what she'll be looking for as a featured judge of the "We Have a Dream" Challenge.

On Key Moments That Led Her to "I Have a Dream":

There are a lot of points I can connect that led me to the "I Have Dream" Foundation. I think most, in the earlier phases of my life, just having experienced direct, overt discrimination led to a lot of questions in my mind around why that happened, what we can do to react, and how to respond. I began to really understand at a conceptual level what racism, civil rights, and social justice really meant; which ignited a little bit of a fire in my belly. As a young child and young adult, I felt a lot of anger and confusion around what was happening and I wanted to be able to do something, to have power, and react to what was happening on a very individual level.

Once I got to college my whole world opened up. I came to understand the structural issues, political power dynamics, and develop the simple vocabulary to articulate specifically what I was witnessing on a societal level. I considered myself a student activist. I was really involved in a lot of different issues and campaigns and spent a lot of my college career focused on trying to develop, create, and gather more resources for students who came from historically disenfranchised or marginalized communities.

All of that led me to join a nonprofit organization called "Teach For America," upon graduation. In that experience, I was placed as a teacher at a low-income school in the Bronx. That's just a few miles from where I grew up in the suburbs of New York City on Long Island.

I was very privileged in that I went to a super well-resourced and high-performing public school. I think teaching in a very different situation really brought home to me in a very real way the disparities that are experienced by students in different zip codes. Again, I think that fire in my belly just grew, and I was thinking about what I could do to address some of these disparities more directly and maybe have a greater impact.

So I ended up going to law school and getting a law degree. I had this whole plan where I was going to work for a few years at a law firm, pay off my student loans, and then come back to the nonprofit world. Honestly, with every month that I practiced law in the law firm setting, I shortened that timeline because I just really missed being in a mission-driven environment and caring a lot about my work in a way that was personal to me. Instead of sticking around the firm for five or six years as I had planned, my time was cut short after two and a half years.

I was able to reconnect to the woman who was my boss's boss at Teach For America. She had gone from being the executive director at Teach for America, New York City to the CEO at "I Have a Dream" Foundation, and she hired me onto the team. That was 10 years ago. I was hired to do a variety of things, which I did. We're a small, very lean organization, so I had my hand in a lot of different pots. A little over four years ago, I stepped into the role as president and CEO, and that's where I am now.

On Working With Founder Eugene Lang:

I consider myself incredibly fortunate, because I did have the opportunity to meet and speak with Mr. Lang several times. He passed away in 2017 at the age of 97 and was working right up until the end. He had a work ethic like you wouldn't believe. When I joined the foundation in 2011 I was able to visit with him and meet with him in his office that he kept in Midtown. He still rode the public bus there every day—he was not someone who believed in living a very lavish lifestyle by any means. I think, really, he was someone who was just a visionary and an innovator. He did not think inside the box. He conceived "I Have a Dream" on a whim.

In 1981, when he started the nonprofit, it was not at all common and there wasn't even a pathway for an individual to privately get involved, let alone give money, to support another group of private individuals. This conception of philanthropy that we have today was really developed by him. You might have given money to Salvation Army, United Way, or maybe your university or a hospital; but before Mr. Lang, people like you or me couldn't say "I really want to support the community of Little Neck," for instance, which is right outside my window, and say "I am going to create an organization that supports individuals that live in Little Neck." That was just not a thing that happened.

I think that spirit of innovation, that spirit of possibility coupled with extremely high quality standards, continued to drive him right until his very last days. He knew excellence. He wanted that quality outcome, and he really demanded it.

I met him in one of the later seasons of his life, and I heard many, many, many stories about people who had to meet that bar. The way he expressed his standards to me and the team was kind, gentle, and warm—but it was firm. If we brought in marketing materials, he would say, "This can look better. Let me show you what a good brochure looks like. This is what your brochure looks like. Tell me what the differences are." That's a literal conversation that I had with him. That's something that still stays with me today—excellence. Plus, his ability to think about that big picture of what's next, and being able to see things that other people can't quite see yet.

On Their Founding Story and Forty More Years of Dreams:

Mr. Lang was an immigrant himself. His family fled from Hungary, and they came here under not the best circumstances.

When they arrived in New York City, they settled in East Harlem. They were quite poor. The family was poor enough that Mr. Lang was sent to work outside of the home when he was just nine years old. He found the job as a busboy at a white tablecloth restaurant on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. If you're familiar with Manhattan, that's right next to East Harlem, but it might as well be a world away in terms of the lifestyle.

He was working at that restaurant as a young boy, when a regular patron took an interest in him. I think he just recognized a gift, a talent, and intellect in young Gene Lang. He asked if he could have Gene tested (I guess that was something you could do back in the '40s). Gene said, "Okay," and he took an IQ test at the behest of this patron, and he tested off the charts. This patron said, "I want to invest in you because I see that you are a special young man, and I want send you to college on my dime." He sent him on a full "scholarship" (it wasn't really a scholarship, he just paid for him) to attend Swarthmore full ride when he was only 15 years old.

He graduated from college at the age of 19, and he earned his degree in engineering and went on to create many processes that we use on a regular basis today. I don't know if this is an urban legend, but I hear that he developed the process for the magnetic strip that's on the back of credit and debit cards, for example. He had the foresight, again, this visionary innovator, to patent all of these processes.

If you went to his office, as I was lucky enough to do, you would see on one of his walls in a bunch of different picture frames, all of them framing the different patents that he owned. He very quickly became incredibly wealthy and very well known as a successful businessman. The principal of his elementary school alma mater, which was PS 121 in East Harlem, invited him back to give the commencement speech for the sixth graders who were graduating in June, 1981.

As the legend goes, Mr. Lang was on his way up to the stage to give this very memorable commencement speech. On the way up, the principal said something very offhand, like, "You better make it a good one because it's the only one they'll ever hear." He said, "What are you talking about?" The principal said—this was when schools were K-6 and then 7-12—"well, most of these kids, statistically speaking, are not going to graduate from high school."

The stats back then were abysmal, this is 1981 in East Harlem. So Mr. Lang ripped up his speech on the spot and said, "You know what, I had this whole rousing, beautiful speech prepared, but I'm throwing it away because I just learned that statistically speaking, most of you aren't going to graduate high school, and I'm not happy with that. I want to make a difference in all of your lives."

He reminisced and shared with the students about the time he had been to the march for jobs and freedom in 1963. He was there in person when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., gave his incredible I Have A Dream speech. He talked about out how moved he was and how he had been waiting for his opportunity to do something, to pay it forward, to make a difference. He felt like this was that opportunity, and he was going to cease it.

He said, "I promise if you graduate from high school and are accepted into college, I will pay for all of your college degrees and experiences. Just the way that someone did that for me—it's my opportunity to pay forward." Everyone was cheering. They were crying. The parents were weeping, and everyone acted like they won the lottery, because in a lot of ways they really had.

The next day Mr. Lang woke up and he realized he had a problem: he didn't know how to get kids into college. He was a very smart man, but that wasn't what he did. Because he was very smart, he went out into the East Harlem community, and he hired a full-time program coordinator. His name was Johnny Rivera, and he was a social worker by way of background. Johnny put together the program that serves as the foundation for our programming even today: after school, on the weekends, over the summers, working intensively with each Dreamer to meet them where they are and help them develop their academics, successful track records, social emotional life skills, leadership capacities, and all of the elements that a person needs to succeed in college.

Really it's an intensive case management approach where he was working with not just the Dreamers, but also their parents and their families— because you need to bring everyone along on this journey. Everyone plays a part to make sure that the Dreamer is successful.

Six years later, I think there were 56 students who were a part of that first group, and 52 graduated from high school. From this group, by the way, we now have "grand Dreamers," or grandkids of the original 56 who have gone through college successfully, and are now contributing to the workforce.

Really, Jonny Riviera's outline formulated our ultimate goal, which is to break the cycle of poverty. We're trying to break it through education, jobs, careers, and stability in that respect.

Ultimately, after "I Have a Dream" had these great outcomes, in 1986, Mr. Lang got a lot of attention from the media for what he had done and the great successes that the program had. There was a 60-minute special. There was a New York Times front page story. There was a Time Magazine story.

The more people found out about what he was doing and how well it had gone, the more people wanted to do what he had done, only in their own community. They started to pick up the phone to call him and say, "Hey, can you help me set up an I Have a Dream? Help me replicate what you're doing in this city, this town, this community," etc. That's when he started the national foundation.

Today, our role is to help support new affiliates, to support existing affiliates so that they can do their jobs even better, hopefully making their lives a little easier in supporting Dreamers, and to bring together those best practices and that capacity building for all of our affiliates around the country.

We currently have 14 affiliates. They're collectively serving about 3,500 young people anywhere from kindergarten through career, or from first grade to first job. Collectively, we've served over 20,000 young people to date. As we look to the future, we really want to be able to grow the number of Dreamers who are benefiting from our programming. Our programming is very intensive, it's very holistic, and it's very long-term. It's what we like to call like the Cadillac of services. If you're a Dreamer, you're getting all the bells and whistles, and so is your family.

It takes a lot to create a program like ours, and we don't take that responsibility lightly, but our goal is to be able to support more dreamers in the communities that we're already in and actually reach out to more communities.

On that note we're really excited about the fact that we just confirmed and approved a new affiliate that will be starting to serve children in the Cherokee Nation this year. This is our first foray into working with the native population in the United States. We do have an affiliate in New Zealand that works with the Native New Zealand population. But here in the United States, this is their first indigenous affiliate. We're super excited and humbled to have the opportunity to work with this community. We've learned a lot, and I'm sure we will learn so much more as we launch this group later this year. We hope that it can be the start of a beautiful relationship that can maybe even expand to serve more indigenous populations in the U.S.

On Dreamer's Stories She'll Never Forget:

Oh my gosh, there's so many stories, and our Dreamers are such special people. The more that I get to know individual Dreamers and understand their lives and where they are today, the more I am just impressed by them. One of the things that I've been really struck by, especially coming into this organization, is that to a Dreamer, I have been received as a staff member with such kindness, such grace, such earnestness. They're just such sweet individuals. When you pour so much love into an individual, love is what you get back.

Walking into a room full of teenagers in high school is really intimidating, and if you've never done it, I don't really recommend it. It's really intimidating, and wherever I've been, wherever I go, whenever I do that, there's nothing but warmth and just so much acceptance and inclusion. There's just something about the Dreamer community, and the team that we've built and the Dreamers that we've served that, by the time they are at that young adult age there's, none of this posturing—nothing but love. I found that to be so special.

Specifically, I can tell you a couple of Dreamer stories. There's honestly so, so, so many. We have a young man in Atlanta, Georgia that I have a really positive relationship with. When I first met him 10 years ago or so he was in high school and he had a dream of going to law school and becoming a lawyer. His mother had him at a very young age, and he likes to say that they grew up together. He experienced a lot of traumatic things in and outside the house, but he was able to persevere and go to Tuskegee for his undergrad degree, which is a historically Black college.

He was able to get a job as a paralegal at a law firm, and he worked there in between classes and over the summers. He ended up getting into Vanderbilt Law School. Law school is not easy—I know from personal experience. He was able to have a great career as a law student and recently started working full-time at that same law firm in Atlanta where he had worked as a paralegal and had his summer experiences. He is sitting for the Bar this month, so wish him luck!

Very significantly, and something that he is incredibly proud of, he recently got married and had a daughter. That was a big goal of his—to get married, have children, and have a stable family life. I think that also shows the holistic nature of our program that encouraged him. Of course, he had it in his own heart that there was more to him than just this professional and academic success, which was very, very important to him and hard earned. Though, there was also this aspect of being able to have joy in his life through the inclusion of family and being able to provide stability to the next generation. He talks about his daughter. His wife is a doctor. He is a lawyer, and his daughter will have this minimum bar of expectation. You might call it a pretty high bar actually at this point, but she will know that anything that she wants is achievable to her.

He talks about the fact that one of his mentors that he met through our program was a reverend at a church in Atlanta, Georgia. This mentor is actually Senator Warnock. That's someone that he met through our program, which is unbelievable—he's now a US Senator. Just the people that we were able to put in his life and have cross his path really helped pull him up and set the highest vision for himself, and he's achieving it.

Another dreamer here in New York City, she was always the leader of the pack—high achieving, high grades, and you never had to really worry about her. She got a full ride to Cornell as an undergrad. For all of us that knew her, we were like, "Wow, she is unbelievable." While she is unbelievable, she went to Cornell and she struggled, and struggled, and struggled. It was a big culture shock for her in every way. After her first year she failed out.

So, she came home, took a little time to regroup, and ended up enrolling in John Jay College of Criminal Justice here in New York City. This was a decision she made that we supported, she wanted to stay closer to home so that some of the cultural shocks could be removed and so her support system could be able to check in on her more regularly. She struggled, and struggled, and struggled, and did not return.

Sprinkle a pandemic on top of all this other stuff that's happening. People are not going back to school for all different reasons now. We were able to place her in an apprentice program called the Coding Dojo through a partnership that we developed with a very large head-hunting and talent firm that focuses on STEM engineering.

There, at the Coding Dojo, she did 8 to 12 weeks of intensive coding programming. They called it a dojo, and I think that's accurate, they were trying to kick her butt. She went in, and she did great. She did it from home and got a full-time job with Microsoft immediately thereafter. I think that story really highlights that everyone has a different path. Sure, four year schools are great. We know the outcomes for people who go to four-year colleges and have that degree, but that's not for everyone and it's also not the only way to achieve your dream.

We're really starting to think about how we can counsel our students so they can truly find their best fit program without that hardcore pressure of going to college. We're trying to soften that message of "You have to go to college," and really just work with our Dreamers so they understand that there's multiple pathways to success. I think that story of the apprenticeship, that small program that we were able to get our dreamer into, really highlights that it can work out in so many different ways.

On Steps She's Taking to Foster Kindness and Inclusivity in 2022:

Outside of the "I Have a Dream" Foundation, just to be totally transparent, I don't know that I always focused on kindness and inclusion. It's come more front and center for me recently, and a lot of my newfound awareness I actually credit to my team for highlighting the areas I could be doing better in. I think it's really important to be able to listen to the team that you have, and understand it's not just about work and what we're doing for our Dreamers, but also for what we are doing for the team. That's something that I tried to focus more on recently. Again, many thanks to the people who are on my team, who are telling me where I could do better.

For me personally, there's been a lot that's been going on with the Asian American community. As a Korean American woman, in my downtime (which does not exist, but I guess in some downtime in some galaxy), I've tried to be very plugged in, supportive, and involved in the Asian American community, whatever that might look like. In the past couple of years, there's been a lot of activity, a lot of movement, a lot of organizing that's happened. I think that's an area where I try to bring my "I Have A Dream" Foundation-self into as well, because I'm always thinking about how we can build more connections and bridges to other communities and not just be so insular in the Asian American community and try and connect the dots between what's happening in other communities and our community.

That's a big thing for me, and the kindness thing is huge. Honestly, I feel like I've grown a lot in that area. Like I mentioned at the beginning of our conversation, so many things make me so angry, and I try to use that and channel that anger in a good way, like towards passion. Sometimes you need to also remember that everyone in on their own journey, and everyone is in a different place in their learning.

Beating someone over the head is not the best way for them to learn; so, leading more with empathy, compassion, and kindness is helpful. Again, total and full transparency, I've had to really check myself and say, "just because they don't think the same thing or way that I think, that doesn't mean they're a bad person." I need to calm down and just lead with kindness and empathy. That's been something I've been working on; and trust me, 2020 did not help me with any of that. That was 2021, my "let me lean into the kindness" moment.

I have two young kids and it's so true what they say, they're watching everything you do. If I tell them to be kind, and they see me then screaming my head off at someone for something, that's not modeling the behavior I want them to see. When you have four little eyes on you, it's essential to lead with kindness.

On What She'll Be Looking for when Judging the "We Have a Dream" Vocal+ Challenge:

One of the things that I will look for is authenticity. It's hard sometimes to have that come through, especially in the written form. So, I think that the best, purest, and most earnest writers can do that in a way that nothing feels too forced.

Closing

Thanks so much for your time and wisdom, Eugena. Your contributions toward ending the cycle of intergenerational poverty, as well as preserving the legacy of Eugene Lang, will be felt for decades to come.

Vocal community, now it's your turn. How do you plan to foster kindness and inclusivity in 2022? The opportunities are endless. Enter the "We Have a Dream" Challenge and tell us how you plan to make this year a little brighter for everyone. Be authentic, be dream-driven, be Vocal.

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About the Creator

Vocal Curation Team

Collaborative, conscious, and committed to content. We're rounding up the best that the Vocal network has to offer.

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Nice work

Very well written. Keep up the good work!

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  1. Excellent storytelling

    Original narrative & well developed characters

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  • keenan eliezerabout a year ago

    Well written

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