Phenomenal Woman
Kids Need This Woman

If you dream of making the world better for future generations, read this.
Meet Wendy Lazarus, Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Children’s Partnership

The Children’s Partnership is a national nonprofit, nonpartisan organization. It undertakes research, analysis, and advocacy to place the needs of America's nearly 70 million children and youth, particularly the underserved, at the forefront of emerging policy debates. The hallmark of The Children's Partnership is to forge agendas for youth in areas where none exist, to help ensure that disadvantaged children have the resources they need to succeed, and to involve more Americans in the cause for children.

Interviewed conducted by Maritza Villegas, Executive Editor (I'm on the left!)

GirlSite: Why did you start the Children’s Partnership?

Wendy: I believed there was some important work that needed to be done for kids. I wanted, as well as my business partner who I started this with, Laurie Lipper, was the ability to look a little more around the bend. The world is changing in some very fundamental ways. What do those changes mean to for the lives of children? How can we map those changes early? How can we get a leg up on dealing with them? Our vision with the Children’s Partnership was let’s see what is around the curve for kids and focus on how that effects large numbers of low income kids. And, try to find some solutions to them.

GirlSite: How did you get this organization up and running? Did you have help?

Wendy: I guess the good help we had was the roughly 20 years of experience with leaders around the country that Laurie and I both brought separately to the table. We knew a lot of the people with great programs and great ideas. We knew some of the foundations that funded in this area. And we really tried to build on them. We really appreciated the first foundation that literally came in to help us open our doors. It was the Packard Foundation. They knew us and believed the message we sent out was a wise one. The other thing we did, besides find a little money to pay for paper clips, was put together a really first-rate group of national advisors. We tapped the best and the brightest on these subjects from the business world, academic world, and advocacy world.

GirlSite: Was there ever a time when you thought this was too much to handle?

Wendy: There were many days that it felt like it was too much, and where I had to wonder how long I could really keep an idea going until support and an understanding for it kicked in. We had our slow days and our slow months. I think from the get-go, Laurie and I both felt so strongly about the value to the children’s cause and what we wanted to do, that we really believed we could do it.

GirlSite: What advice would you give to teens who have great ideas, but can’t get them kick-started?

Wendy: I would say you have a lot more assets than you might think you have. Start with who you know, and then figure out who they know, and don’t be afraid to ask for things. So many times we sort of politely want people to discover our good ideas in us. And a lot of times we don’t do that simple thing like saying ‘Can you give us a modest contribution or can you help provide through staff of your company the help we may need?’ So, beginning with what you have and being really confident that you’re not asking a favor, and believing you’re really giving the people you know an opportunity.

GirlSite: What children’s issues mean the most to you and why?

Wendy: I always cared most about the kids in this country who haven’t been given from birth the basic advantages of things like having a square meal three times a day and a roof over their head. I have been spending most of my career on bread and butter kind of issues to make sure that neighbors with concentrated poverty can at least get the basics for their kids. At the Children’s Partnership, we knew from day one that in order to get something done we would have to have some focus. I’ve been in organizations before where I did the full range from child support enforcement to childcare to nutrition to health care. But, we really thought if we were going to be a mean lean and effective place that focus mattered a lot.

The two areas that I feel very deeply, but I also think research showed the greatest need, is kids and the information age. What does the digital society mean? How are poor kids going to be at greater risk for the advent for computers, and jobs that rely on computer skills? And how could we get a leg up to prevent the wedge being driven deeper between low-income kids and others.

The second area which I always felt in my gut and which I probably spent the majority of my career on is basic health care for kids. And it’s just so clear that any of us can take it for granted. It seems so simple and so vital. The way we choose to focus on it here is to say we are going to focus on what is changing about the health care marketplace; it’s placing poor kids at risk and see what we can do to get more kids basic health insurance. So, we are doing a lot around kids that are eligible for public insurance programs like the Medicaid Program and so on.

GirlSite: You also serve as the Children’s Defense Fund’s first Director of Health. What does this position involve?

Wendy: I started back in the early 1970s when the Children’s Defense Fund was a young organization. My job was to help develop what their health agenda should be and how the Children’s Defense Fund could best promote a good health care for kids and improve the health status of kids. So, my job was pretty wide ranging. It involved learning to lobby in Congress, learning to work with the media, learning to work with business leaders, and learning to put together coalitions in States to bring some of these reforms about. It was practically my first job out of graduate school—it was the ideal thing.

GirlSite: You also are the founding Vice President for Policy for Children Now, what does this involve?

Wendy: It is a non-profit group in California that started in the late 1980s called Children NOW. It’s where I met Lauri Lipper; she was the vice president for communications and I was vice president for policy.

GirlSite: We’re not done yet! You were also consultant to the Conrad Hilton and Piton Foundations. What do those foundations consist of?

Wendy: I have always been interested in the grant-making and private form topic of our society. And because they’re the ones who decide what kinds of ventures get funded and ones that don’t, they’re an incredibly important influence in the whole social field. And I had the privilege to see, from the inside, how foundations tick. First with the Piton Foundation, which is based in Denver, Colorado, and makes mostly grants around persistent poverty challenges. I was a consultant for them. That’s when I was raising two young children and working part time. Then, in Los Angeles, I worked as a consultant—really a part time staff person—for the Conrad Hilton Foundation. I was asked to help them come up with some funding strategies internationally.

GirlSite: Resume stuff aside, how did you really get to where you are today?

Wendy: I would say I followed my nose. If somebody said to me ‘Where do you think you will be when you land your career?’ I would have been way in left field. The only thing you can do is follow your nose and do something that feels important to you and trust your instincts that the next junction will lead you to where you ought to be.

GirlSite: We believe that school and internships are a big part of gaining experience in a career. Did you have any internships?

Wendy: I did! It was further along than high school. When I finished my graduate program in health administration, I was able to get a fellowship, which is a year-long training program that lead me to get mentored and help teach at the University of North Carolina. I feel like that was one of the biggest gifts in my life. It gave me a chance to just buddy up with people and have them expect me to ask questions. Go for it if there’s ever an internship!

GirlSite: You graduated from Yale as one of the first class of women graduates. How did that feel?

Wendy: It was weird. Weird because my class was literally the first class of women integrated in an institution where a lot of the men who were there came there only wanting a man’s institution. I had to put up with the attitude, the condensing of some of the students there. But, at the same time, it felt like a very pioneering time. There was a buzz in the air that this was a time of revolution, and it was.

GirlSite: What are your plans for the future regarding the Children’s Partnership? Yourself?

Wendy: We are approaching our 10-year mark. We are very pleased and proud. What we really want to do is to begin to tell the story of what we learned about how you can do idea development, and research development in a social area, which is the children’s field. We want to keep doing research and development, but we also want to begin sharing our insights about how it can happen in more places.

GirlSite: Who inspires you in life?

Wendy: I have to say my father, who was a very busy department store executive. He inspired me because he spent what seemed like as much time in the community in Columbus, Ohio, as he could. His time was about making his community a better place for the people who lived there. So that got into my blood early and stayed there. Women also inspire me. That’s where I draw my inspiration—strong women.

GirlSite: What career advice would you give to our readers? How can they get the job they really want?

Wendy: I would say to search your insides to what really makes you tick. Rule out what you think your parents want you to do. Try to really have a conversation with yourself about what you feel strongly about, and start there. And talk to as many people in that field as you can to learn more about it. And try to get in it, and if you can’t start somewhere because whatever experience you get is going to help you a great deal to where you want to go.