Stories that Shape Us with Nicole Lynn Lewis
About This Episode
Nicole Lynn Lewis is the founder and CEO of Generation Hope and an incredible leader in the fight against poverty and the stigma surrounding it. Her specific area of focus? Teen mothers.
You see, Nicole is a former teen mother herself, rocked by this sudden life change that upended her life at a young age. But she was able to rebound, to put herself through college with a three-month-old daughter along for the ride.
"... across higher education, about one in five undergraduate students across the country are parenting. It's almost five million students," she says. "It is an invisible population ... a population more likely to be women and women of color, particularly black women."
Nicole decided to do something. She wrote a book, Pregnant Girl: A Story of Teen Motherhood, College, and Creating a Better Future for Young Families, and Generation Hope was born. It's a nonprofit dedicated to supporting teen parents and their children through mentorship, emotional support and guidance, and financial resources they need to thrive through college and kindergarten, a two-generation solution to poverty.
Nicole's story is amazing, inspiring, and challenging all at once. Join us and hear how her story truly shaped the future of this movement. Our deep thanks to Nicole for joining us on Mission Forward.
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Nicole Lynn Lewis:
When we look across higher education, about one in five undergraduate students across the country are parenting. It's almost 5 million students. When I tell people that who are working in higher ed every day, many of them, their jaws drop on the floor. It is an invisible population, and we know that this population is more likely to be women and women of color, particularly black women. We know what comes with that. When you really start to talk about this population and how significant they are, you have to start doing something and providing resources.
Carrie Fox:
Hi there and welcome to the Mission Forward Podcast, where each week we bring you a thought provoking and perspective shifting conversation on the power of communication. I'm Carrie Fox, your host and CEO of Mission Partners, a social impact communications firm and certified B Corporation. That was the voice of Nicole Lynn Lewis. Nicole is a social entrepreneur, a CNN Hero, author of the award-winning book Pregnant Girl and Founder of Generation Hope, which is a nonprofit organization. She started after her own experiences as a teen mother.
She put herself through the College of William & Mary starting as a freshman when her daughter was just three months old. As we get into this conversation, I'll start with what The New York Times Book Review said about her book. This book is so much more than a memoir. Her prose has the power to undo deep set cultural biases about poverty and parenthood. Wow. We have such a good conversation ahead. Nicole, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us and welcome to Mission Forward.
Nicole Lynn Lewis:
Thank you so much for having me. I'm really honored to be here.
Carrie Fox:
Nicole, on this season of the show, we are talking about the role of storytelling in social change, and you certainly know a thing or two about that. If I reflect just a bit on what I've heard you share about your personal story and your experiences as a young mom, which led you to launch Generation Hope, I think about where you have come and how you have used your story to now have a very high impact organization that is working to ensure all student parents have the opportunity to succeed and experience economic mobility. That is a tall order, but really when it comes down to it, your story really launched this movement.
Nicole Lynn Lewis:
Yeah, it did. I often tell people that the story of Generation Hope is very much connected to my own story of becoming, if you will. My story starts in New England. I was raised by two college educated individuals who were very focused on making a difference in the world in their own unique ways. My father, for example, was in the Peace Corps in the 1970s and in Nigeria and had a lifelong passion for making a difference and really a connection to the continent. Then my mother was an art teacher and an artist and really taught us through just pursuing her own passions the importance of creativity and using your talents and skills to make the world a better place.
So we were really, my sister and I, surrounded by that growing up. We grew up in these small New England towns that were not very diverse. My mother is white, my father is black. So definitely experienced a good bit of othering and understood what it felt like to be treated differently because of the way you looked and because your family was different. So that was very much a part of my childhood. At the same time, I was really involved academically in my school. I loved reading, I loved writing.
I used to find napkins and receipts and the backs of my homework, whatever paper I could find throughout the house and I was writing poetry and I was writing a fictional series about teenage girls and just loved writing. My mom would get so frustrated with me because the shopping list would be gone and I would've written another chapter on it. So I was very into school. I was very into writing and reading and just had a passion for all of those things.
So my parents raised both my sister and I to be very focused on college after high school. That was a given. It was what we were preparing for, always encouraged and supported in getting honor roll and our best grades and doing whatever we could to make ourselves appealing in the college application process. So that was something that started very early on. So I was in high school, my family had moved from New England to Virginia Beach, Virginia, so in the Tidewater area. I was in my senior year a few months before graduation and I found out I was pregnant.
So I was just a few months from starting this whole new chapter of my life, and here I was, I was going to be a mom. It was an extremely intimidating, scary path forward. People often say to me, "Well, you were so academically involved, you were so clear on your college trajectory. How did you get pregnant besides the obvious?" So I often tell people that I grew up in a stable home financially. We weren't rich, but we were able to pay the bills. But it was a tumultuous childhood, a lot of fighting, a lot of arguing. So I was really looking for things outside of the home that I needed, that stability, that love, that assurance, and found myself in a really unhealthy relationship by my senior year.
So my pregnancy came at a time where I was trying to figure out what was next for me, which college was next for me, and then yet here I was. The real decision point was how am I going to move forward? How am I even going to step foot on a college campus now that I'm going to be a mom? No one in my community, my neighborhood had gone on and gotten a college degree as a young mother. That just didn't happen. They disappeared. Or you saw them maybe working in food service or retail. No one got a college degree. So it was uncharted territory.
I ended up taking a year off and leaving home the next year was probably one of the most difficult years of my life, I was sleeping in cars and being in a really difficult, tumultuous relationship with my daughter's father, not having a place to rest my head, sometimes not having food to eat. I was eight months pregnant, living day to day in a Motel 6 when I found out I was accepted into William & Mary. But through all of that, I ended up starting at William & Mary when my daughter was a little under three months old.
I always tell people, "I thought these feet don't belong here." When I stepped foot on campus, I was surrounded by students who didn't look like me, who had a ton of resources, who didn't have parenting responsibilities. I thought, "Let me just put one foot in front of the other and see where it takes me." That's what I did over the next four years. Just really difficult in many ways. I ended up dealing with so many of the things that parenting college students deal with every day, from how do you keep the heat on in the winter, how do you afford childcare, how do you manage work and school and parenting, how do you make the dots connect financially.
But it was also just this transformative experience of finding myself, finding my voice, finding my people. I graduated in four years with high honors, and Narissa, my daughter walked across the graduation stage with me. That really was the catalyst for Generation Hope because I was so excited on my graduation day. But I also felt sad because I knew that I was a rarity and I knew that I could help other young parents have that same excitement and that same success, and so that it sparked a fire inside of me to do something about it.
Carrie Fox:
Right, right. From there, you didn't immediately launch a nonprofit, right? It was a little while still before that spark turned into you launching a nonprofit.
Nicole Lynn Lewis:
Yeah. Part of that was then I went on because I love torture and I got a master's degree as a single mom and a full-time professional and got my degree at night from George Mason. But then another part of it, and this is something that I definitely have come to realize later on as I reflect back, is that I didn't see myself as a CEO or a founder. I really felt like that is something that other people do that don't have my lived experience. They don't have my journey. They have resources.
People would say, "Start a nonprofit." I'm like, "That's for rich people. That's not for me." So I think there was a lot of resistance of feeling like I wasn't qualified to start an organization. I was not a CEO. I didn't see myself as that. So it took a lot of internal arguments myself, about being worthy to step into that position. So a lot of what I talk to people about now is to see yourself as a founder, to see yourself as a CEO. We need more people with this lived experience in these seats. But I think that was a part of why it took me a little while.
Carrie Fox:
Nicole, we're going to talk about Generation Hope, but I want to stay on that for a moment because I'm thinking about all the folks who are listening, me included, who have a lot of difficulty thinking about ourselves as executives, even though we're sitting in these seats, a lot of people who are not yet in that role who want to be in that role. It sounds like this self-motivation was a big part of it. If you think back, were there people in your life that were also coaching you, believing in you, pushing you along? Did you have those folks?
Nicole Lynn Lewis:
Absolutely. I think all along the way, I was just speaking at event this past weekend, and I was talking about in high school, I had these champions who were really rallying for me as a teen mother. Here I was pregnant, I had been this rockstar student, but I was in this space now with a baby coming where I had a lot of teachers and friends who wouldn't talk to me, who were harshly grading me, who they at first wanted to write all my recommendation letters, now that I was pregnant they wanted nothing to do with me.
I had a black principal, Mr. Morgan, who in retrospect was such a rarity. In fact, our high school was built on a former plantation and he was one of very few black principals across the Virginia Beach public school system. We know that that's still the case in terms of black teachers and black principals. But him being in that seat made all the difference for me as a young black teen mother in that situation. He was able to make sure that my absences didn't count against me in terms of being able to graduate on time. So that's a great example. I had a guidance counselor who also championed for me.
Then later on, even in starting Generation Hope, one of our very first challenges was not having office space. We didn't have Bill Gates knocking on our door saying, "I love your idea. I love your vision. Let me cut you a check. Or here's some offices." I met with Terry Freeman who was heading up the Greater Washington Community Foundation at the time. I mean, we were in our early, early stages, didn't have our 501(c)(3). She loved what the vision was, and she believed in me and she saw something in me.
Maybe a few months later, I emailed her and said, "Hey, if you know of any space, please let me know. We're looking for just a cubicle to start working out of." She told us, "Come on in and we had space at the Community Foundation to be able to incubate the organization." So people who didn't have to believe in me, I mean, Terry Freeman was such a big deal in the nonprofit space in the D.C. region. So that's a great example of her seeing something in me early, early on that was vital to us being able to grow as an organization. So there are so many people who encouraged me and who mentored me and who pushed me to think bigger about myself and about Generation Hope.
Carrie Fox:
Yeah. I want to make a connection there. You were talking about how when you were in college, you felt like such a rarity, that looking around it was hard to find someone who was in a similar experience as you. If I recall, as you then started to do the research to inform Generation Hope, you started to realize that maybe it wasn't as rare, it's just that maybe it's not often seen. Talk to us a little bit more about the realization of how common perhaps your situation is.
Nicole Lynn Lewis:
So when we look across higher education, about one in five undergraduate students across the country are parenting. So it's almost 5 million students. When I tell people that who are working in higher ed every day, many of them, their jaws drop on the floor. It is an invisible population. That is wrapped up in a lot of stigma and bias and our assumptions and determinations about who is worthy of being in a college classroom and who isn't. We know that this population is more likely to be women and women of color, particularly black women.
So again, how all of those biases show up in really seeing a population, really naming a population, and then we know what comes with that. When you really start to talk about this population and how significant they are, you have to start doing something and providing resources, right? So there's a silencing and an invisibility around the student parent population that we are trying to upend. At Generation Hope, we really want people to understand that these students are on your campuses every day. The other thing that we want people to understand is that there would be more students who are parents coming into these institutions if they were set up for success at a college or university.
Most colleges and universities are not doing enough to ensure that these students are successful. They're not creating truly family friendly campuses and institutions. Then also for policymakers to understand that helping parents get college degrees really is a lever in this economic mobility conversation that we're not pulling. So doing a lot and helping people to understand why the child tax credit matters and what that can do for a family and how that can unlock their earning potential and different things. So yeah, it has been an amazing journey to come from a place where I felt very isolated at William & Mary to now being a part of this movement and this larger student parent effort and being able to be a voice in this work.
Carrie Fox:
So Lisa Cron's book, Wired for Story, she's got this great quote that if you can't see it, you can't feel it, and if you can't feel it, you can't do anything about it. So Generation Hope is helping to do something about this issue that you've just outlined. Tell me how you have used the power of story, the power of communications, to really ensure that both individuals in power in higher education institutions, but also as you just said, decision makers, elected officials have the ability to do something about this issue.
Nicole Lynn Lewis:
Well, story for us was huge from the beginning because this population is so stigmatized. People tend to have really strong feelings about teen mothers and teen fathers and teen pregnancy in general. It's a polarizing issue in many ways. People also misunderstand the issue. They see it as very black and white, when in reality it's much more shades of gray, and it's connected to our inability to make headway on poverty, our inability to do things that we need to do around race equity and gender bias and all sorts of things. So it's the ugly stuff that we don't want to talk about and we don't want to face.
So I remember when I started Generation Hope, I met with a funder and was pitching about supporting the organization, and they were pretty much saying, "No one's going to want to support teen parents in college." So we had to figure out early on, how do we talk about the core of this work, what this all really boils down to in a way where it is very difficult to argue that this is something that we shouldn't support, you shouldn't support? So at the core of the work, it's family. It's family. It's a love between a parent and child. It's wanting that child to have a bright future, wanting that parent to be able to provide for their family. Those are things that everyone understands that's universal.
So helping people to get to the core of what Generation Hope is really about, and it's about family and it's about love. So as we talk about the work and we've done from the very beginning is leading with that. We lead with family, we lead with love. I think that has helped us get people from all different walks of life, from different sides of the aisle to understand why this mission is important. We've woven that throughout our messaging over our 13 years.
The other thing that I would say that has always been central to who we are and has really been baked into our DNA is centering the voices of our families. So that happens across all that we do. For example, we make our decisions about how we grow strategically based on what we're hearing from our families. So when people say, "Well, why did you decide to bring on mental health programming onto your staff? You could have outsourced that." Well, that's what we heard from our families, right?
But it also goes to a core component of our policy work is having our families and student parents across the country really speaking about these issues, these policy issues and how they impact their everyday lives. So we help them write op-eds, and then we place those op-eds right out in different publications. We have them speaking with us on panels. But we've also done things like we've had foundations come to us and ask us to do different research on different topics. Well, we decided to flip that around, and we asked our families, we asked our community, what are the research topics that we should be elevating and illuminating for people?
So all of the reports that we're putting out over the next three years are not dictated by foundations. They're dictated by what our families are saying they wish more people understood and knew about domestic violence and its connection to teen pregnancy or how black and brown student fathers are invisible within higher education. So those are just some examples, but I think those have proven to be really important tools for us as we've grown over our history.
Carrie Fox:
What are the issues that feel most pressing right now to Generation Hope when you think about where your focus needs to be now and in the coming years?
Nicole Lynn Lewis:
The evolution of the organization has been we have honed a direct service model over the past 13 years that is, one, really rooted in families, it's centering them. Two, it has incredible outcomes. So we have higher graduation rates than most college graduates across the country, whether they're parenting or not. It's eight times the rate of single mothers nationwide and almost double the rate of low income students nationwide. So the proof is in the pudding, right? That is really showing that when you surround these students with the supports that they deserve, the sky is the limit, right? That's what we really see ourselves as is removing barriers so that they can shine.
So we've been able to grow this work and hone our model, and at the same time, we're seeing that this work really can serve as a proof point for what systemic change looks like when it comes to families, particularly families on the fringes. So that's where we see our direct service work really fueling our systemic change work, the work that we're doing with policymakers, the work we're doing with higher ed institutions. When we come in and we talk to colleges and universities about the importance of supporting student parents, we're not doing that in theory. We're not talking about it because we read a paper or something like that. We're doing it because every single day our team is boots on the ground with these families. So it gives us a different perspective.
So what I love about the evolution of the organization is that it has taken this direct work with families and has started to help people understand how do you translate that into large scale change for not just the families that we serve in D.C. and New Orleans, but across the country and your community. What are those policies that you can champion? What are those practical things that need to change and transform an institution to be more family friendly? So that has been just an incredible journey for me as a leader, an incredible journey for us as an organization.
The timing is perfect because we know, we particularly saw in COVID and as we emerged from COVID that these families are among the most impacted, right? They were already really in crisis before COVID-19, but the pandemic really shined a light on the fact that they have been allowed to fall through the cracks. So this work is really timely. We're seeing people saying, "We want to figure this out. We want to figure out how to do this better." So it feels really relevant to where we are as a country right now as we're trying to figure out these big things.
Carrie Fox:
It does. It does. It actually makes me think, many of the folks who listen to this show, they'll write in and share some of the key themes that they're wrestling with. So we tend to then follow up and use the show to touch in on those themes. One of them is around this constant sense of or getting past a constant sense of urgency, how urgent an issue is. You've just named it, right? These are critical crises that we are talking about, and there must be urgency around them. But that if we operate every day with a sense of urgency, we will not be effective.
I have watched you over the years, Nicole, so thoughtfully and deliberately move your work forward. There is a patient urgency I see in the way that you approach this work. I'm curious if there's anything you can share to shed light on the way that folks are feeling on how I think a lot of folks wish they could come to the work in a way that you have.
Nicole Lynn Lewis:
Yeah, so I think, a couple things. First, I'll just name that I get it. There are many days where I want change to happen overnight and I get frustrated, right? So I totally understand. I think for me, I think as we've looked at the impact that we can make, one of the things that has always been top of mind is that I don't want to grow to the detriment of what we've built. A great example of that is we made this key goal of our strategic plan to expand to our first city outside of the D.C. region. We identified over three years that we would pick one location to grow to. Well, we had funders who said, "Well, why not two, why not three? Why is it one in three years?"
The reason for that is because we didn't want to grow to a new city to the detriment of what we've built in D.C. because then nobody wins, and really, it hurts families. So we had to be willing to say no to funding, or we had to be willing to at least say no to funders and challenge that power dynamic that's often at play there because we knew that it was important for us to do this intentionally and to be able to sustain. We all know organizations that run with that urgency and have funders who are saying, "We want this to happen tomorrow." They don't make it. Either they're having to scale back at some point, they have to pull in some of those new sites that they've created or that new programming, or there's a huge shift in a leader because a leader is like, "I can't do this anymore."
Those are the things that happen when we lead with that sense of urgency and that sense of desperation for we just have to get it done. I totally get, like I said, where it comes from and the place it comes from. But for me, I have to constantly remind myself that I need Generation Hope to play the long game. I want us to be here. I want us to be here in the fight and in the trenches. If we're going to be here, we have to be thoughtful in how we grow and what we pursue, what we say yes to and what we say no to.
Carrie Fox:
Clearly you've built something that will long outlast you too, which I think can also be hard for a leader, founder.
Nicole Lynn Lewis:
Yeah. I mean, I think a lot about the fact that, and this is nothing new, this is not a new concept, but that what we are doing is we're planting seed that other people will see the flowers, other folks will see the trees. For me, I think a lot about my own children. I'm a mother of five. The seeds that I'm planting are really for them, for their world when they're older to be able to see families thriving no matter the shape, look or feel of that family or the background of that family or that family's story. So that encourages me is to think about I may not get to see all the flowers and the trees, but my kids will, right? I have that to look forward to and that keeps me motivated.
Carrie Fox:
Well, we're at time already and it's hard to think that it's already come to an end. But Nicole, as we talk today, we're doing this via Zoom, we are probably a stones throw from one another. I will share very quickly that, for those listening, I have known Nicole for a very long time. I've watched her since the beginning of Generation Hope. She has been a model and an inspiration to me for many, many years. I am so glad to have watched this incredible evolution of Generation Hope and to have supported your work along the way as a bystander.
But Nicole, what you do and how you do it has always been so thoughtful and so impactful. So for those listening, I would suggest check out Generation Hope, read Pregnant Girl, support the work and the growth of this organization. This is the kind of work that we look to as an incredible model of what impact looks like at its best. So thank you, Nicole, for what you are doing.
Nicole Lynn Lewis:
Thank you so much. Time went by too fast. I felt like we just got started. Time flies when you're having fun. But thank you. It's been an honor to chat with you today, and thank you so much for all of your support over the years.
Carrie Fox:
That brings us to the end of this episode of Mission Forward. Thanks for tuning in today. If you are stewing on what we discussed here today or if you heard something that's going to stick with you, drop me a line at carrie@mission.partners and let me know what's got you thinking. If you have thoughts for where we should go in future shows, I would love to hear that too. Mission Forward is produced with the support of Sadie Lockhart in association with the True Story Team, engineering by Pete Wright. If your podcast app allows for ratings and reviews, I hope you'll consider doing just that for this show. But the best thing you can do to support Mission Forward is simply to share the show with a friend or colleague. Thanks to your support and we'll see you next time.
