Welcome to the newest feature on eROI.com, the Friday interview! Every month we will bring you a short interview with a person we work with, find inspirational or can bring value to our audience. It’s only fitting we start with Ben Sand, CEO of the Portland Leadership Foundation, and long-time friend of eROI.
The Portland Leadership Foundation started Embrace Oregon in 2013, one of our nonprofit partners. We are extremely proud of the work we’ve done with Ben and Embrace Oregon to help recruit new foster families around the state.
Ben Sand, CEO
Portland Leadership Foundation
1) Explain your role with the Portland Leadership Foundation and Embrace Oregon.
I serve as the CEO of Portland Leadership Foundation. All together, PLF runs 10 different initiatives. We are committed to developing multicultural leadership and incubating ideas focused on serving the government and the social sector. We are a “house of brands” instead of a “branded house.” One of our most important initiatives is Embrace Oregon. We have a really talented team of folks who run Embrace Oregon day-to-day. My job is to work with them on high-level strategy, fundraising, and political engagement.
2) What are the biggest things you’ve learned running non-profits?
For 10 years of my career, I didn’t have language to describe the stretching experience of running a non-profit. I started reading about Adaptive Leadership Theory from some guys out of Harvard, and for the first time, I finally had some language to describe what I do. Leading a growing non-profit requires the ability to think on the fly, network with the right people, and push the envelope to find new ideas that work. There are certainly many soft skills required to do the job, but to flourish in this work, I’ve got to know how to put PLF in unique situations where we will influence complex issues disproportionately.
3) What are the biggest challenges that you see Portland facing in the next 10-20 years?
1) An increasingly diverse community: By 2023, Multnomah County will be comprised of more people of color than Caucasian people. Portland is going to become increasingly diverse, but our city has not been a just one for historically marginalized communities. We HAVE to deal with the deep racialization that affects the everyday life for hundreds of thousands of our brothers and sisters. It seems to me that we have just pricked the consciousness of the average Portlander regarding race. We need leaders from all sectors and all ethnicities to step into this conversation in new ways.
2) Will Portland work for all?: 1,000,000 people will likely move to Portland in the next 20 years. We all love our city, but there is a huge opportunity gap in Portland. I’m concerned the challenges for the most vulnerable Portlanders are compounding. There is no such thing as a “silver bullet” when solving our most complex social issues. In the future, we will all need to put our heads together to come up with multi-sector approaches to ensure the Portland of the future works for everyone.
3) Selfishness: Out all of the things that make Portland great, we are known for our commitment to individuality and self-expression. My concern is this fierce commitment is often mistaken for what lies beneath it all—a strong streak of selfishness. We will only be a great city if we learn how to better love one another and self-sacrifice for others.
4) How do you organize and motivate people?
Relationships are everything. It is the currency we use at PLF to get work done. We work very hard to create an environment where our staff and volunteers engage with a feeling of freedom and a joy in operating in their strengths. It is my job to create an environment where people are best positioned to flourish. Ultimately, our goal is to create meaning in the lives of Portlanders who want to take the dare and serve their neighbor.
5) In a sense, with PLF, you are a serial entrepreneur. How do you view an initiative as a success? What would make it a failure?
One of our core values at PLF is “risk,” and as a result of that, we push ourselves to start initiatives when we sense that there is an opportunity to bring uncommon partners together to uniquely work toward solving complex social issues. We are diligent to clearly define what “success” looks like, but we don’t always get there. While we have 11 different initiatives that are sustainable and flourishing, we have seen another 10 fizzle and burn out. In fact, I have an entire folder of files on my computer called “Misfired Projects.” I’m proud of that.
6) Any big plans for the future?
We have huge plans for the future. As an organization committed to multicultural leadership development, we now have a portfolio of initiatives that position PLF to strengthen and develop leaders as starting as early as third grade (Champions Academy), through college (Act Six, City Builders, Avenues to College), and culminating with post-college employment (Young Fellowship, Emerging Leaders Internship). The leadership pipeline being developed is whole new territory for PLF and for the city. We are also really excited to have been asked by the State of Oregon to scale our Embrace Oregon work across every county in Oregon. This new statewide effort is called Every Child, and we are poised to see record numbers of foster families step forward into partnership with DHS to serve vulnerable children and families (in January 2016, we had 83 families in the tri-county area inquire to become foster families, which blows out any previous record number in history).
7) How can people get involved?
Because we are a house of brands, I would encourage folks to go to our website and check out each initiative. If you have questions about how to get involved with that initiative, most have separate websites to which you can navigate to learn how to get more involved. Here is a cheat sheet: www.embraceoregon.org, www.everychildoregon.org, www.actsix.org, www.pdxchampions.org, www.elinterns.org.
Ben Sand founded Portland Leadership Foundation in 2008, and in the years since its inception, PLF has grown dramatically and now sends 50 local scholars to school each year through three scholarship programs. Ben also oversees the national expansion of the Act Six brand – an urban leadership and scholarship program designed to empower the next generation of diverse leadership for the region. Over 170 young leaders from Portland have gone to college on full need, full tuition scholarships.
Ben completed his Master of Divinity at George Fox University and is an elder at Imago Dei Community. He and his wife, Maile, have two biological children, Adah (5) and Zoe (3), and a foster son, Julin (13 months). Ben loves flyfishing, running, writing, and Gonzaga Bulldogs Basketball.
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