AEI’s Bridging the Divide Summit

AEI hosted the Bridging the Divide Summit in Denver, Colorado, on June 5–7, 2019. The Summit was an action-oriented, forward-looking gathering designed to address the most pressing public policy issues of our time.

The Summit was the culmination of the multi-year Human Dignity Project, which expanded AEI’s work on key issues that included preparing Americans for jobs that exist today and in the future; finding solutions to the opioid epidemic; increasing opportunity for the currently and formerly incarcerated; and promoting work and family formation as the best way to alleviate poverty. The Human Dignity Project focused on how to bring Americans together to overcome a culture of contempt that has poisoned so much of our political debates.

The Summit agenda highlighted the depth and breadth of AEI research on these critical policy issues. The gathering featured keynote conversations with major policymakers and thought leaders, breakout sessions with business leaders and social entrepreneurs, and site visits to nonprofits working in the Denver area to increase economic mobility and individual opportunity.

More than 375 members of the AEI community participated in the Summit including social entrepreneurs, business leaders, state and local policymakers, AEI investors, and coalition partners. One hundred twenty five members of the AEI Leadership Network participated in the Summit. The Leadership Network consists of more than 730 talented leaders from across the country who work to increase opportunity for those at the margins of society and rely on AEI to provide them the ideas that animate their work in their community.

The Bridging the Divide Summit was the first-ever event of its kind for AEI. It exposed hundreds of leaders to AEI scholars’ innovative research on key policy issues. These leaders will act as force multipliers for AEI’s values: freedom, free enterprise, and opportunity.

The past, present, and future of poverty alleviation

AEI President and Morgridge Scholar Robert Doar opened the Bridging the Divide Summit with a keynote speech on the past, present, and future of poverty alleviation efforts in the United States. Doar has led AEI’s poverty studies program for the past five years and officially began his tenure as AEI president on July 1, 2019.

Doar focused his remarks on the good news about America’s fight against poverty: poverty has fallen in this country for the past four decades including child poverty, which is at its lowest level since this measure has been recorded. He included data analysis on how our safety net effectively supplements income through the Earned Income Tax Credit and other benefits. Doar promoted work as the best way to reduce poverty and indicated that a major challenge that must be overcome is falling labor force participation, especially among men.

Nonprofits featured in breakout sessions on poverty alleviation

The Bridging the Divide Summit featured two breakout sessions on poverty alleviation on the conference’s second day.

Breakout session one: Helping families overcome poverty

The Bridging the Divide Summit featured two breakout sessions on poverty alleviation on the conference’s second day. AEI Resident Fellow Matt Weidinger hosted a breakout session with Family Independence Initiative Founder Mauricio Miller. Miller is the author of The Alternative: Most of What You Believe About Poverty Is Wrong. Miller outlined his personal story as a son of Mexican immigrants overcoming his own family’s poverty to go to Berkeley and eventually go on to work in social services.

He founded the Family Independence Initiative (FII), with the support of then Mayor Jerry Brown, which was a program designed to support low-income families in planning their finances and supporting each other. Miller’s efforts are based on a core belief that individuals want the tools and guidance to help themselves. He has had success in the Bay area, particularly in immigrant communities, and has started to expand his model internationally.

Breakout session two: Mentorship program for at-risk children see results

AEI Resident Fellow Brent Orrell hosted a breakout session with Friends of the Children Founder Duncan Campbell and Chief Officer of Expansion and Policy Erinn Kelley-Siel. Friends of the Children is an Oregon-based nonprofit that provides professional mentorship for at-risk youth.

The conversation highlighted why Campbell started Friends of the Children and some of its success stories. Campbell detailed multiple accounts of how, even after just a year or two, students in the program transformed their behavior. Already in almost 20 locations, the organization looks to expand to even more cities and provide services to a younger demographic. To do this, the organization, in conjunction with external stakeholders, has produced a robust arm of internal evaluation metrics to measure program outcomes.

What works in employee training?

AEI Visiting Fellow Joe Fuller hosted two breakout sessions on training today’s workers with the skills they need to succeed. These breakout sessions featured diverse voices from the worlds of business, nonprofits, government, education, and public policy.

The first breakout session was a roundtable discussion with Noel Ginsburg, Founder and CEO of CareerWise Colorado; Joe Garcia, Chancellor, Colorado Community College System; Montez King, Executive Director, National Institute for Metalworking Skills; and Barbara Stewart, CEO, Corporation for National and Community Service.

Fuller led the panel through a discussion about their work and how it relates to building a thriving workforce that is open to everyone. Ginsburg described his work researching the Swiss apprenticeship model and organizing a visit with Colorado state officials to Switzerland to encourage them to support programs that have students consider the trades as well as a college education.

King told his own story of how finding a trade helped him to avoid trouble in his low-income neighborhood. Stewart highlighted her dream of having a year of service for youth in the United States to connect American young people from a wide range of racial, socio-economic, and geographic backgrounds. Garcia discussed his work helping young people find an education that matches with their career goals and jobs that exist in the market.

The second breakout session featured Fuller with Walmart’s Senior Director of Federal Relations Jana Barresi, University Ventures President Ryan Craig, Jobs for the Future President and CEO Maria Flynn, and Western Governors University President Scott Pulsipher. The participants gave a brief overview of how their organizations support skills development. While each panelist provided unique answers, their responses underscored the need for institutions (public, private, and nonprofit) to work together to advance the broader mission of helping workers attain meaningful skills.

Before audience Q&A, Fuller held a lightning round with one question: If you could reimagine one part of skills training in the United States, what would you change? This question elicited interesting answers, especially from Flynn who proposed a completely new funding structure from the federal government that would better serve workers in the 21st century economy and beyond.

Early learning and child welfare

Research indicates that childhood development is crucial to success as an adult. The Bridging the Divide Summit featured a keynote conversation and breakout session to discuss how we should approach the first years of a child’s life to ensure that children are both safe and prepared to thrive in adulthood.

AEI Resident Fellow Naomi Schaefer Riley hosted Public Prep’s Ian Rowe and the Administration for Children and Families’ Steve Wagner for a discussion about how local, state, and federal social service providers can work with nonprofit and educational organizations to increase opportunity for young people. Public Prep is a network of single-sex charter schools in New York City. Rowe discussed the school’s in-home visiting program for the younger siblings of the school’s students, which provides early intervention and encourages parents to invest in their children’s education. Wagner discussed ACF’s work facilitating connections between front-line providers working to increase the social and economic well-being of children and families across the country.

In a breakout session on the Summit’s second day, AEI Resident Scholar Katharine Stevens was joined by Florida State Representative and the Children’s Movement of Florida CEO Vance Aloupis for a discussion on brain development in a child’s critical early years. Stevens outlined the latest findings on childhood brain science, during which she took a deep dive on development, education, and how inputs in the first three years of life—good or bad—determine outcomes in public and private life that extend far into adulthood. Aloupis discussed his perspective on where states stand on these issues, why we need to bring more attention to these issues, and what challenges stakeholders are facing to address them.

Social capital and civil society in America

AEI’s Director of Domestic Policy Studies Ryan Streeter hosted a starlight chat on the current status of civil society in the United States. The presentation was based on AEI’s Survey on Community and Society (SCS). The SCS was fielded in 2018 and aimed to contribute to the literature on social capital, civic well-being, and quality of life in the United States.

Streeter’s presentation began with the often-reported storyline about social life in America: the American Dream is dead, Americans are bitterly divided, and we are facing an unparalleled loneliness epidemic.

Findings from the SCS push back on that narrative. Overall, 80 percent of survey respondents report that they are living or are on their way to living the American Dream. The vast majority of Americans feel a strong sense or some sense of community and identify. And only eight percent of Americans report feeling loneliness “often.” Being close to neighborhood amenities also increases trust and neighborliness, the report finds.

The next step after the FIRST STEP

More than 650,000 people are released from prison each year. More than 65 percent of these individuals are rearrested within three years. How are prisons preparing the incarcerated for life outside of prisons and what systems are in place to promote employment and reduce recidivism in this high-risk population?

AEI Adjunct Fellow and Executive Director of the Center for Advancing Opportunity Gerard Robinson hosted White House Assistant to the President for Strategic Initiatives Brooke Rollins and Koch Industries General Counsel Mark Holden for a keynote conversation on criminal justice reform. The session focused on the FIRST STEP Act, which was signed into law in late 2018 and retroactively applied the Fair Sentencing Act to the more than 180,000 prisoners in federal custody. Rollins and Holden were key players behind the passage of the bill.

The conversation focused on what comes next for criminal justice reform. Holden and Rollins discussed interventions that could reduce the recidivism rate for the approximately 1.9 million prisoners who are incarcerated in state or local jails and prisons. These included increased use of in-prison education and job-training programs to help the formerly incarcerated find and maintain employment when they leave prison.

Perspectives on criminal justice reform

Summit participants heard directly from individuals who had been incarcerated and were now on the outside working to reform the prison system in a breakout session on the Summit’s second day.

This panel was moderated by Gerard Robinson and included three panelists, each of whom had been incarcerated for various felony convictions and shared their story about what motivated them to become involved in criminal justice reform: Stan Andrisse, Assistant Professor at Howard University College of Medicine; Shon Hopwood, Assistant Professor of Law at Georgetown Law; and Topeka Sam, Director of Dignity at #cut50.

Andrisse shared how the judge at his sentencing told him that he would never amount to anything and remain a criminal for the rest of his life. He characterized this as the major motivating factor for him to continue his education post-release and briefly discussed his current work as an endocrinologist and founder of From Prison Cells to PhD, a program for at-risk youth. Hopwood discussed his time in prison and how he became interested in pursuing a JD while assisting friends and fellow inmates with the appeals process.

AEI Innovation Grants awarded

Two nonprofit organizations were awarded the first-ever AEI Innovation Grant on the final day of the Bridging the Divide Summit. The Innovation Grant is designed to support the work of nonprofit organizations who are on the front-lines of the fight to increase opportunity in the communities where they operate.

Nominations were open to all members of AEI’s Leadership Network from our 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 cohorts. Eligible organizations included those where Leadership Network members worked or served on the board.

AEI received an incredible 151 applications for the two $25,000 prizes. The winners were selected by a panel of judges including AEI President Robert Doar, AEI Resident Fellow Brent Orrell, and AEI Resident Fellow Naomi Schaefer Riley. The winners were Rocky Mountain MicroFinance Institute (RMMFI) and Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement (PACE). Rocky Mountain MicroFinance supports entrepreneurs through business services, training, and loans. PACE provides services to philanthropists interested in investments to sustain and strengthen American democracy.

The Innovation Grants were made possible through a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation.

Bridging the Divide summit feedback

AEI measures the results of our programs based on quantitative and qualitative feedback. We sent a post Summit survey to all Bridging the Divide Summit participants asking them to rate each session as well as the overall experience at the Summit.

Ninety-nine percent of respondents indicated the Summit was as (28 percent) or more (71 percent) interesting than other conferences they had attended. On a one to ten scale, survey respondents gave the conference an average rating of 8.78. Ninety-three percent would recommend a similar conference to their peers.