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One of the exercises in CLP is about identifying and clarifying our personal values. We each identify our top five values, writing one each on five index cards. Then we have to drop one, and another… until we are left holding the card with our number one, top value.
Wow. I spend time talking about this all the time. I’d say integrity, honesty, authenticity, family, faith and community.
Which would you name as your top one or two?
Actually, I think the last three — family, faith, community — resonates the strongest and arises from my childhood.
In what ways?
I lived in legally-segregated America during the Jim Crow era. That meant that in order to survive, one needed to develop close ties to family and the broader Black community. Growing up in the segregated south, the concept of being in a protected community was — and still is — top of mind. As a child, when I saw people living — what I know now as — an integral-filled life, with emphasis on faith, family, and community, they seemed to be prosperous and healthy.
The other part of your question brings to mind the notion of people in the community watching out for each other and other people’s children. Being a part of community meant being able to know and share with your neighbors.
Sharp edges cut the outline of the boundaries of the Black community, which helped to frame what we knew as the “Black Experience.” That was important to ones life in the Black community. It’s similar in many ways still today, although my sense is that many people do not know their neighbors and the boundaries have become blurred.
My family was deeply religious — not spiritual, but religious — they believed in Jesus Christ. Like all people who operated within the context of some religious doctrine, there are also those areas within community where discrepancies and inconsistencies were evident.
Humans will be human.
Yes. I was reared in a “do as I say” culture and not a “do as you see me doing.” As a child, what people did before church, after church, and during church mattered to me. Being the last of six children, I learned to be observant at an early age. It became a skill and has carried over into my professional adult life.
My parents migrated from southwest Georgia to the city of Jacksonville, Florida, to give their children a better life. I grew up in public housing in Jacksonville. My own family experience created a keen understanding and sensitivity for others who arrive on our shores looking to provide a better life for their children. The issue of immigration today serves as a reminder of what my parents were seeking when they migrated across state lines to seek refuge in Florida.
I can see forward movement in America on civil and human rights, but the new age politics seems to be going in a different direction than what I anticipated. This new age of politics — of hate and discrimination — is deeply concerning.
Absolutely. Would you like to say more about it?
America is supposed to be a country made or curated from diverse groups of immigrants. Immigrants who sought America as a place of refuge and opportunity. With a couple of huge exceptions, of course — African American and Indigenous people. But irrespective of how we got here, we are all in search of a better life. And we need allies — whether we know it or not. The fight for freedom is a worthy undertaking, no matter which side ideologically or physically you sit on.
For me, that fight began with the notion of understanding family and community. We often characterize our survival as predicated on the stability of the nuclear family. Given the breakdown of the traditional concept of family, we have found other ways to create a modern family — which is much broader and includes extended family.
When I moved from Florida to Connecticut, I learned that including community as a component part of my extended family was — and still is — critically important to my personal and professional survival. I ultimately learned that how we frame and create community and extended kinship includes friends and neighbors who can grow and love one another as though they were connected by bloodline.
So, community is definitely a leading value for me. Understanding early in life right from wrong, good and bad, is how one finds their moral center. That moral center comes from who constitutes your family, or how you choose to; I am always searching to find people that are honest, have an integrity, and convey authenticity.
Today, I see more people struggling to find their moral center, as the ground shifts and the pace and speed of change quickens beneath our feet.
What is one big, burning leadership question you are wrestling with these days?
The constant shifting and struggling of how one creates and maintains integrity within the context of changing organizational stability and budgets. The increase in the number of working families in need of financial support beyond what is derived from their work.
Issues being faced by poor and working families have intensified. And in our work, the role that the not-for-profit plays is to serve — bringing relief, support, empathy, and hope. This is becoming increasingly more difficult. That is harder to do from behind a computer screen. There is a growing sense that the newly-trained don’t want to or like to have much human contact.
Technology is helpful, but it also speeds things up and adds an impersonal element, interfering with relationships. More employees want to have less contact with each other, and they want to work from home.
Another struggle I have as a leader is to figure out how to keep my colleagues engaged in a conversation about accountability, leadership, and responsibility as part of inculcating a culture of accountability. I aim to inspire staff to be perpetually involved in leading and co-creating the culture within the organization, and staying excited about their work.
And while another major challenge is retaining competent workers, we are also trying to foster the development of a set of skills, attitudes, and behaviors that are transferrable to other environments.
Thank you for sharing both the breadth and depth of that.
I keep saying to our leaders that failure is part of the process of growth and learning. Though for some reason, failure is seen as all-consuming and devastating. I don’t know when that changed, or why. I see failure as an event along the process of developing oneself personally and professionally.
I’ve always been grateful to the people who share that their “success” is the result of hundreds of so-called “failures” along the way.
When I think about the work that we have been doing at Community Action Agency of New Haven, there is much room to make mistakes — it is difficult and complicated. One of the things we are doing good, and right, is developing people who have signed on to work with us.
For the years prior to my arrival 18-plus years ago, one of the things that this agency was not — was honest, credible, or reliable. We have spent considerable time, training, and investing in the staff to make this a meaningful workplace built on values that improves the work environment. The approach is called ‘bringing fresh air,’ not just into our organization, but also into the community.
The fresh air – that is, “A.I.R.” stands for our prioritizing authenticity, integrity, and responsibility. As we began to build on those internal attributes, we found ourselves journeying into the process of building a strength-based culture internally and with those individuals and families we engage with.
And so, we use that authenticity, integrity and responsibility as the guideposts for our staff’s ability to be representatives of the organization when they are away from the building. And that comes back to my growing up years, as well as the business imperative to infuse values into the services provided by the staff.
Over the past couple years, we’ve begun to do some things with university partners that have an interest in community-based organizations, and continuous learning, study, and scholarship.
We are working with Southern Connecticut State University on Black maternal health and the Yale School of Medicine on equity in “Medical Educational Development.” This allows us to hire differently, recruiting grassroots and well-trained individuals to be planners, community health workers, and client navigators. It also allows us all to better understand poverty, root causes and the impact clinically, then approach strategies that focus on systems as well as individuals.
You might remember that in my first year and a half, we got raided by the federal government. They came in hot, as if we had a cache of weapons or drugs.
We had 105 staff people, with about 63% of them functionally unproductive. What I was told was that the organization had a $680,000 operating deficit the year before I came, and a $2.3 million historical debt. Only to find out two years later it was $6.7 million.
We paid off the nearly seven-million-dollar debt in May of 2024. Getting to the point of operating a with negative debt is big.
I’m not sure if “congratulations” is the right term, but I so respect the work, patience and persistence of you and your team. What inspires you, gives you hope these days?
At my core, I am a servant leader and a teacher. I also had some great professors, mentors, coaches, teachers, and leaders.
What gives me hope is the legacy being built here at CAANH. What gives me hope is the amazing amount of people we are able to engage as partners, volunteers, sponsors, and funders. No matter how difficult it gets, the generosity and the positive human spirit continues to show up. I’m inspired when see staff and clients use, develop, and take advantage of the opportunities given to them. It inspires me when you see people being attentive, responsive, and curious.
I love the phrase or slogan – “Keep hope alive!” We keep hope alive by the examples we make for those that are watching. The examples we leave behind. The way that we walk and the way we talk when we are being intentional is what gives me hope. Our mission and promise give me hope.
Would you please introduce us to someone you are/were close with personally (e.g., family, teacher, friend, mentor), who shaped (or shapes) you and how you view leadership and possibility for a better community/world?
Kenn Harris, Patricia Baker, Derek Gordon and Larry Stewart would probably be the people.
Kenn is an ordained pastor, former director of the New Haven Healthy Start Program, national consultant on issues of organizing communities for change. He is a longtime friend and Board Chair of CAANH.
Patricia Baker is retired. She was the first President of the Connecticut Health Foundation. I met Pat when she served as the Executive Director of what is formerly known as Planned Parenthood of Connecticut — Planned Parenthood of Southern New England. She is a mentor, advisor, friend, and confidant.
Derek is an associate professor at Yale and a clinical psychologist, who does a lot of consulting around men’s health and boys’ relationships with their mothers and fathers. He has been a strong supporter and encourager of my career choices; he’s helped me with his skill in listening and providing feedback. And in return I’ve done much of the same for him.
Larry Stewart is a community leader who works in construction development; he used to be the chair of the board here. He’s been someone who has pushed me, and helped to guide and clear paths for some of the earlier work that we had to do here at the Agency.
What do you recommend to us, in each of these categories:
- Reading – Culture Shock: An unstoppable force changing how we work and live, Gallup’s solution to the biggest issue of our time… and The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World by Andy Crouch… and Poverty, by America, by Matthew Desmond.
- Listening – Reverend Dr. William J. Barber’s book, White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy.
- Eating – I can’t recommend anything, I’m a terrible eater. Watermelon, they’re filled with the one thing we need, water. And eat it cold.
- Watching – The 20 year-old documentary film called The Secret.
- Laughing – Later Daters; it’s a new series that’s produced by Michelle Obama about older couples who are seeking to date and settle down. They’re in their mid-fifties, 60s and 70s, it’s hilarious.
- Wildcard – your choice – Play in the rain, like you did when you were a child.
Learn more about Amos via Instagram or FaceBook
Get in touch with Amos directly: asmith@caanh.net
Interview with The Circle’s Creative Director & Editor, Lara Herscovitch (Cohort 10). To reach Lara directly: thecircle@clpnewhaven.org or Lara@LaraHerscovitch.com
I would commend the author on the clarity, honesty and deeply personal way he shares with us his journey, putting on flesh at every critical growth spurt. Amos Smith is a critical thinker with a strong message for this present age; which is, we must reach out and seek to help build community and in so doing help build a stronger community and a better world. Thank you for sharing with us