About Elana Leoni
Elana has dedicated the majority of her career to improving K-12 education. Prior to founding LCG, she spent eight years leading the marketing and community strategy for the George Lucas Educational Foundation where she grew Edutopia’s social media presence exponentially to reach over 20 million education change-makers every month.
Connect with Elana online at her personal Twitter / LCG Twitter
Check out the LCG podcast, All Things Marketing and Education
You can learn more about Leoni Consulting Group here
Episode Transcript:
PODCAST INTRO: Hello, and welcome to the “Game On” podcast. My name is Adam Bellow. I am the CEO and co-founder of Breakout EDU. But I'm also a father, a serial edtech entrepreneur, and an advocate for positive change in the classroom. Each episode of the “Game On” podcast is going to feature a new voice from someone who's making an amazing impact and helping to pave the way for the future of education. We're gonna get to explore their ideas and opinions, as well as learn from those successes and failures from these amazing educational gurus. Alright, let's get started.
Welcome to the Game On! podcast. I'm your host, Adam Bellow, and I'm so excited to be joined with just an amazing, amazing woman who happens to be an amazing friend, who is also an incredible, incredible advocate for what's great in education. Elana Leoni, who runs her own marketing and education consulting group, LCG. There're so many things that Elana has done. We've known each other for, I think, over a decade, Elana, I think like 12 years or something like that, which is incredible. So, without further ado, welcome and thank you so much for joining us today.
Elana Leoni (01:06): I'm so happy to be here, Adam. I have to say I'm slightly nervous because I'm always the host on my podcast. I'm one of those people that doesn't like to be the star of the show, and I just love learning and having conversations with people. So, the tables have turned on this one, so I'm happy to be here with a little hesitation of, oh gosh.
Adam Bellow (01:30): Yeah, that's, that's fair. I mean, I will say, I had the pleasure and honor to be on your podcast early on and then I will say it was such a smooth experience. I was like, "oh, let's see if I can do that", and I will tell you from the doing this side of things, it's definitely a lot of work. So host or guest, I feel like there's definitely pros and cons. But I really am just excited to have you on here. It goes without saying. I know I've told this to you over the years, but I feel like for our audience to know you're one of the most genuine people that I know in the space, and I feel like the work that you do, you're doing marketing and you're doing messaging around big brands and we'll talk about some of the things that you've done and some of the things you're working on now but to know that the person behind it is just truly genuine and doing things for the right reasons and with the right intentions, nothing but respect and just admiration and again, just friendship. We've known each other a long time. We've had lots of fun adventures in a variety of places and it's been awesome, and I figured, well, yes, you might not want to talk too much about yourself. I feel like the audience here listening would probably learn a tremendous amount from you because you are one of those people that has just lots of great wisdom and insight on stuff, so getting that out there.
Elana Leoni (02:42): Thank you Adam. Thank you so much. It makes my heart happy because so many of us kind grew up together in K-12 education in our careers and recently being able to go to ISTE and seeing people after a break in Covid, I didn't realize how much you all fuel me just as much and how we have all grown up together and really tried to navigate this crazy world of K-12 education together in a way that makes us feel fulfilled as humans and make sure that we both all look back at our time here and say, "Wow, I did what I could to make a difference". And I know that drives us all.
Adam Bellow (03:23): Absolutely.
Elana Leoni (03:24): So a little bit about me. I'm Elana Leoni. I run a marketing agency called Leoni Consulting Group, short for LCG, we've been around for five years, and I'm kind one of those people that feels like marketing is slightly a bad word. I feel like some people stereotype marketing is almost like spray and prey and like, we need to acquire new customers and promote and all of these things and privacy issues and get them in some email lifecycle and all of these things. So although that can be done and should always be done authentically, especially in K-12 education, our team focuses on specific aspects of marketing. So I spent eight years at the George Lucas Educational Foundation known to the world as Edutopia that's where I had the pleasure of meeting Adam and so many inspiring educators. And from there I just really discovered my passion to connect authentically with educators and do that through organic social media marketing, and that's what we do at LCG and building educator communities. And the magic that holds all of that together is also uplifting educator voices and we do that through creating content; any educator that has a passion for something. We work with brands to create content in the form of e-books, blog posts, podcasts, you name it. So those are the things we love doing. We feel like by doing these things right, you can be as useful in a consistent way to educators and start creating relationships that matter.
Adam Bellow (05:00): Yeah and that really is at the key and the heart of it and again you mentioned Edutopia, that's a brand that to this day, and I know you were like the instrumental force behind creating what I like to think of as one of the best looking and best sounding and most genuine brands out there, and for those people listening today, it's just as relevant right now and I feel like that's literally based off of the bones that you built. So, taking that and then being able to work with other brands has been - watching your work blossom over the last five years as you've been doing it on your own. I feel like it's incredible to kind of see that organic, genuine voice building and community building and then take that into other places.
Elana Leoni (05:46): Yeah, thank you for that. I will say that Edutopia has a remarkable team and still a lot of the same people I used to work with are still there. It's led by Cindy Johanson, a very inspiring leader.
Adam Bellow (05:57): She's amazing.
Elana Leoni (05:58): Yes, she is, and then she also now has Steve Merrill, who's the executive website producer who has a beautiful eye for editorial. Amy's over on video and been producing for a very long time. She's @VideoAmy on Twitter, such a good, good human. So there's like really, Sam's still leading the community. So I love being able to work with people that are passionate about improving the space as much as they are. It taught me so much and it inspired me to do the work that I'm continuing to do because as soon as I met educators, I fell in love with you all. One, you made me all feel like slackers because you're doing so much, right? You're doing so much on top of your day job. A lot of the Edutopia educators were trying to connect and using social media to say, Hey, I need help reaching out, collaborating, blogging, speaking, and that all comes with time and not everyone was doing it, but there was just so much going on and being as selfless as possible to say, how can I really help the kids that I'm serving and the parents and the communities that I'm serving. It's just every time I talk to them, I'm like, I'm not doing enough and I'm not doing support them as brand, and I always was really hard myself. How can we be as useful possible to the people that we're serving? And that's one of the things I will hit home to every single brand I work alongside in education is, are you being as useful as possible to your audience?
Adam Bellow (07:27): Yeah, I love that. And so I think we're kind of jumping out a step, which is great. I think Edutopia will probably come up in some of the questions I have for you in just a moment but again, I think that that's kind of a big kernel of, it's certainly where you and I had met and, and the work that I've admired for so long but a lot of stuff does trace back to that and I feel like as an organization and a non-for-profit they've been able to do great work and I think it's 30 years that they've been doing that work which is surreal.
Elana Leoni (07:58): Long time. Yeah and I think maybe just contextually for your audience, to give a little brief background of who I am. Sure. I always represent business more so on the business side, the marketing side. I've never been an educator in the classroom, but I think my superpower is knowing and connecting educators and elevating their voices as much as possible. My team are mostly all former educators as well, but mostly when people talk to me, I can talk to the business people a little bit. I like talking numbers trying to translate what they need and then working with my team to do it in an authentic way. So I have an MBA at Berkeley, recently got that like, I don't know, three years ago.. Go Bears!
Adam Bellow (08:42): Amazing.
Elana Leoni (08:43): And I also have a passion for equity and access and have served on lots of nonprofits including just recently at the Mount Tamalpais College, formerly known as the Prison University Project and we're the only higher education institution based inside accredited university based inside a prison.
Adam Bellow (09:06): Wow.
Elana Leoni (09:06): So we provide AA degrees to our incarcerated people's population in San Quentin, which is near San Francisco, California.
Adam Bellow (09:14): That's amazing, and it's also shocking that it’s the only one.
Elana Leoni (09:16): Just a little bit of a context too.
Adam Bellow (09:19): Yeah.
Elana Leoni (09:19): Well yeah, it's the only accredited University .
Adam Bellow (09:22): Accredited one.
Elana Leoni (09:22): Based inside a prison. So there's a lot of higher education institutions partnering inside with different prison populations but that was a journey in itself going through an accreditation review with the college and redefining what college even is and education is. We can get to more of that, but I just wanted to frame that always a marketer started, Love education. That is our passion. We only work with education brands, but I also have a passion for equity and access and do lots of volunteer work.
Adam Bellow (09:59): Yeah. Which can be summed up by saying you're a really good human. So, shown by the work that you do and the passion and the time you put into it and, and all of that, so now we're going to kind of come back to the beginning. So obviously, the way we break up our podcast here is that we have levels. So we're a game company, we think of everything as levels. So, our level one question our icebreaker as you would, would be a question about play and play is really important here at Breakout EDU, and we want to kind of start off by asking you what is your favorite game that you got to play as a kid? And it could be whatever you want video game, it could be playing tag, could be whatever, and then what is something that you might have been playing more recently?
Elana Leoni (10:42): So level one, it was interesting cause I was thinking about this question and games fuel you throughout your childhood and sometimes it almost becomes like a nostalgia memory and you don't really remember it, but it helps form who you are, and as you get older you start playing different games. So I was even just reaching out to my family. I'm like, what was that game we played? That kind of self-discovery and rediscovering your childhood through games was really interesting. But I started when I was younger playing like really fun games like Hungry, Hungry Hippos. Remember those where you're just like.
Adam Bellow (11:21): Of course. I love that.
Elana Leoni (11:22): Right or like operations where you had that little skeleton dude and you were like. I might be dating myself a little bit with some of this stuff.
Adam Bellow (11:31): No, no, no. That's awesome.
Elana Leoni (11:33): Like Candy Land, Shoots and Ladders, Monopoly. My grandma would spend hours with us teaching us games like, I don't know if you know Kings in the Corner?
Adam Bellow (11:45): No.
Elana Leoni (11:45): It's like a card game. She was obsessed with it. So I would play Kings in the Corner like my grandma and then.
Adam Bellow (11:51): That's awesome.
Elana Leoni (11:52): When she was trying to get like our energy out, we would play this game called Slack Jacks. You know Slack Jacks?
Adam Bellow (11:57): I do - that one I know.
Elana Leoni (11:58): OK. It's the silliest game. You just throw your cards out and then when you see a Jack you slap it right and then you get the pile. So it's kind of war but like oversimplified. I don't know, games were always a part, where they be physical games mostly when I was younger, to be honest, then like Atari came to the scene and my brother had like a little bit of an Atari moved into Sega Genesis. Within Sega Genesis we played two games over and over and over again. One was ToeJam and Earl.
Adam Bellow (12:33): Okay. Yeah, Earthworm and yeah, yeah.
Elana Leoni (12:37): Yeah, yeah, and they would go through all these levels and there would be like shopping cart ladies that would just like roll you over and they had like a nerd pack and I know this game is not PC but they had this nerd pack that would just come and roll and like topple you over and like all of these weird things.
Adam Bellow (12:55): That's amazing.
Elana Leoni (12:55): It's kind of fun, and this one is definitely not PC this game, but I used to play Michael Jackson's game.
Adam Bellow (13:04): Oh, is it the Moonwalker game?
Elana Leoni (13:04): I think so, and you would to each level but your goal was to save children.
Adam Bellow (13:12): Wow. Well that definitely didn't age well.
Elana Leoni (13:16): It was really hard. So all these children would be locked in closets and things like that but the way to them.
Adam Bellow (13:23): Oh my…
Elana Leoni (13:23): It would be bad.
Adam Bellow (13:26): That's also a Michael Jackson game.
Elana Leoni (13:28): Is that they had all these bad guys and you would have to dance with them to kill them. So you would do.
Adam Bellow (13:35): Wow.
Elana Leoni (13:35): Like a thriller dance or whatnot and then you'd kill them.
Adam Bellow (13:39): I knew of this game. I did not know the specifics. Now I'm really gonna have to do a little YouTube research later and find out because that just sounds very, very unfortunate.
Elana Leoni (13:49): Yeah but you know, at the time we were big fans of Michael Jackson.
Adam Bellow (13:53): Of course.
Elana Leoni (13:53): I can't imagine like a bigger influence on my music when I was a kid.
Adam Bellow (13:58): Yeah.
Elana Leoni (13:58): Like Thriller and whatnot. So those are the video games I think.
Adam Bellow (14:02): Awesome.
Elana Leoni (14:04): We even got really into with my cousin Dungeons and Dragons, where we play it.
Adam Bellow (14:09): Oh.
Elana Leoni (14:09): All day long, weekends and get really serious on that stuff.
Adam Bellow (14:14): That's awesome.
Elana Leoni (14:14): Did you ever play Dungeons and Dragon?
Adam Bellow (14:16): So I never really got into D&D. My kids though are thoroughly obsessed. I mean to the point where my son actually at this moment while we're recording this is at an all day, all summer D and D camp. So he's.
Elana Leoni (14:29): Wow.
Adam Bellow (14:29): Doing that all day long. They're obsessed. I think Stranger Things helped with kind of making it very popular again and taking a lot of the stigma out of it because it was considered the nerdy kids that would play D&D. I definitely fit that bill. I just didn't have the five friends to play with or whatever I guess.
Elana Leoni (14:46): Yeah. I grew up with nerdy cousins and they brought me in and I got hooked.
Adam Bellow (14:50): That's awesome.
Elana Leoni (14:50): So I loved it. So that was like my childhood and.
Adam Bellow (14:53): That's amazing.
Elana Leoni (14:53): And now I have to say I'm sad I don't play as many board games because no one will play with me. I love them. I seriously have board game night at my house, I have board game, holiday parties love things like, Sorry, Yahtzee, Clue, and now I'm like into by myself playing Backgammon by myself.
Adam Bellow (15:17): Oh, ok.
Elana Leoni (15:19): Yeah.
Adam Bellow (15:19): That's awesome.
Elana Leoni (15:19):So I love all of that stuff and most people who know me, in terms of my games. It's more of a physical game where I play Bacce and Shuffleboard and bowling and things like that.
Adam Bellow (15:29): Oh bowling. That's awesome.
Elana Leoni (15:32): Used to, horrible.
Adam Bellow (15:33): Used to.
Elana Leoni (15:33): My joke is I always get most improved player every time I join a league because that's so bad in the beginning.
Adam Bellow (15:40): Hey, you're making progress. That's amazing.
Elana Leoni (15:43): For every league, they're like and the most improved player award goes to. I'm, like oh gosh.
Adam Bellow (15:49): Well hey, you know, if you got a talent for it, you might as well keep doing it. I have a friend who bowls. He's gotten, I don't know maybe 10, three hundreds, he's really an amazing, could be pro type of bowler and occasionally he'll be like, Hey, you want to go bowling? And for him bowling is like 10 games in a row and it's very serious, and for me it's just like, nah, they have much real sticks, it'll be fine. Anyway, the bowling is awesome. So anyway, next time, next ISTE we should go bowling. You could be the most improved bowler.
Elana Leoni (16:17): We should go bowling?
Adam Bellow (16:17): It'll be fun.
Elana Leoni (16:18): We'll play Bocce.
Adam Bellow (16:20): Okay, let’s play Bocce. There you go. That works, awesome. So I'm going to move us up to level two and level two is let's talk about your history. Everyone has an origin story. So what was it that kind of put you on this path to become who you are and do this work that you're doing? You mentioned a long history of working with Edutopia for I think you said eight years, obviously you're running your own group that is dedicated to ed tech and ed startups and ed companies. What made you go into that into that space?
Elana Leoni (16:52): Yeah, I mean I think who you are is such a journey. That's why I never like terms like expert because who you are is you're continuously growing and figuring out, and the joke is we're all just still trying to figure out who we want to be in this world. But where I'm at now, I don't know if I perceive myself back in the day when I was first starting out my career if I'd be here but what helped me get here was definitely my work at Edutopia. But even prior to that, I'm a first generation graduation student, come from a very poor background, come from a lot of mental illness, addiction, kind of trauma. No one in my life talked about college, no one talked about how education can kind of change you or help you or transform you and so when things were not going well in my childhood, I would use reading or school just to be somewhere I could escape and somewhere to just be super curious and learn. I was slightly good at it, but mostly it just helped me be calm and be somewhere else and just escape and be this like amazing learner. So, throughout my life I was just kind of moving around and I didn't really have any teachers that connected with me until my fifth grade teacher and my fifth grade teacher, I was now at a brand new school, came halfway through the year. That's so horrible when you can't even start a school year, and he just immediately believed in me and he immediately said, "You know, Elana, I think someone like you, I can get you up to", at the time I was fifth grade, I" can get you up into seventh math." I think just, all those things that he would talk about and just believing and then sharing his passion of like rocks and silly stuff like that and birds. I still have those passions to this day because of him.
Adam Bellow (18:55): What's his name?
Elana Leoni (18:57): So, having someone, his name was Mr. Follet. Richard Follet. He passed away. All of you educators listening, I want you to know, even if you never got a thank you, know that you have fundamentally changed so many people including my story. I never got a chance to go back to him and tell him how he fundamentally changed my life. And I just want you all to know, I know lots of you get thank you letters and, and keep binders and emails and stuff like that, but know that that's only representing a small portion of the thanks that you get. So, because of that one teacher, it really helped me solidify that what if I didn't have that one teacher and so many kids don't and so many kids go down another path. I think if I didn't have that teacher at that time, I would've gone down a bad path.
Adam Bellow (19:46): Wow.
Elana Leoni (19:47): Because we moved around a lot and I didn't have anyone that believed in me and I just thought I was kind of playing around at school and didn't know there was anything else out there. So that helped me and when I got the opportunity to work in an organization like Edutopia and be immersed with so many inspiring educators, it just all clicked. It's like this is where I want to be, and it makes me feel good to help people that need being helped so much. I mean, I can go on and on about the stories and the connections of educators that I've met and I'm sure I'll share some stories throughout the way but that fundamentally fueled what I wanted to do. And I started my agency because I wanted to work with different types of educators and different stakeholders in education, because the more you work in education, obviously it's not just one type of person making a difference. You got to work together to make big change, and I wanted, as a marketer to start creating relationships with all of those stakeholders. So that's what kind of fueled me.
Adam Bellow (20:53): That's awesome. Yeah, I mean it's funny you mentioned like all the different stakeholders. It's so true that there's so many components and moving parts but at the same point, and this is something that I think you and I uniquely can speak to is like, the space is so small and the people you meet, people you've met and again, like you met me through Edutopia. I was at that point a teacher and writing a couple of random posts for Edutopia blog or magazine, and our relationship is that we've gone through so many different stages; you've gone on to do your own business. I've gone on and helped run Breakout, and it's just funny to see the space you'll bump into the same people, the same teachers that you've met along the way, I'm sure come back into variety of capacities. It's really a small world is the point.
Elana Leoni (21:46): Yeah. And some people even at ISTE were like, how do you know so and so? And most of us just paused, smiled at each other gratefully and say, oh, we just go way back.
Adam Bellow (22:00): Yep.
Elana Leoni (22:01): And then if they're lucky, we will talk about how we have all been a part of each other's lives and seen each other ebb and flow throughout the industry in different roles and grow, and I feel so lucky to be a part of that.
Adam Bellow (22:14): Yeah, ditto. So our level three question is about challenges, and you kind of alluded to some challenges you had obviously growing up and we definitely don't have to dive into that but in terms of your career, is there an obstacle that came up whether it be from the path of Edutopia through to today, some obstacle or challenge that you've had to overcome to get you to where you are now or something that you've kind of learned along the way from there?
Elana Leoni (22:44): Yeah, this one's a hard one cause everyone's got lots of challenges in their lives. I think my first career outside of undergraduate school, I went and got a job in tech and it's like a software service company. And now that word is, is' fundamentally a little bit more normalized now that Salesforce is a big thing and all of that but at the time, 2004 software service wasn't really a thing, and when I jumped into the world of technology and even at this point it wasn't Ed tech, it was philanthropy tech, so still doing good, but more what we call corporate social responsibility, you might hear the acronym CSR. So in that world of tech, there were a lot of limiting beliefs on people, and in particular, I came in as an admin assistant just wanting to dip my toe in the water of technology and I had a lot of limited beliefs placed on me and there was a lot of unfortunately sexual discrimination and misogyny and you're a girl, you can't do these things and this is when engineer teams were a hundred percent male and I was like one of the three people, women in the organization. And the women were in customer service at the time or sales or BizDev, and when you're starting a career, for me in particular, I never worked in any kind of corporate environment. I didn't know about internships, so I didn't take advantage of them in college. I didn't know how to write an email when I first got in-things like that that you just were so new at. So you take things at face value and you take things of people telling you what you can and cannot do as truth, and so I struggled for a really long time of like, "oh, I should just do this." That's what people told me I should do. And having people impose limiting beliefs on you is really hard to get out of. I'd have to say, being in a more welcoming environment like Edutopia where it is female run is probably even now so at least 60-70% female, I felt more welcome and I learned a lot about myself and just jumping in and having people trust your gut and your passion.
Adam Bellow (25:07): Yeah.
Elana Leoni (25:07): I can't believe what it meant to me when I was in the staff meeting at Edutopia and me and Betty Ray at the time who ran the community and all the editorial and the blogs, we were just hanging out on Twitter and I remember Cindy saying, "Just keep hanging out there. I think there's something there." Because we couldn't even quantify, in business sometimes you have to justify why you're spending time in certain places with reach and engagement, and I'm not undervaluing that, but I'm also, when things are brand new, there's an opportunity to just sit and listen and poke around and see what could be, and we poked around and saw what could be on Twitter and ed chat and we developed our entire blogging strategy around people saying cool things that really just sparked ideas, and we're like, "That's cool. We never heard of that, you should blog, and elevating their voices when they had their own limiting beliefs about themselves too. So, I think fundamentally just getting over people telling me what I could and couldn't do based on what I looked like.
Adam Bellow (26:11): Yeah.
Elana Leoni (26:11): Was really hard, and then as you progress in organizations and leadership, you do have people trying at times, unfortunately, trying to tell you, you're not good enough or you can't be this or do that, and I hold that really hard because I have a bad instinct for my childhood of just holding it and saying that they're right. I can't do this, I can't do that. And whenever you take a risk in life, everybody, their natural reaction is, you're going to fail. I'm so scared for you, you’re going to fail, and I'm sure you experienced that too, Adam is like, when you went to form one of your first companies and get out of the classroom, "What are you doing? You're leaving stability."
Adam Bellow (26:53): Yeah, my mother was like, "You don't get a pension. This is not a logical teacher move. I was like, yeah, I know.
Elana Leoni (27:01): I left a billionaire.
Adam Bellow (27:03): Yeah literally.
Elana Leoni (27:04): You're crazy. You're absolutely crazy. Elana, what's wrong with you?
Adam Bellow (27:08): Well, well, so here's the interesting part. So you mentioned the toxic culture at your first job and then you, you kind of juxtapose that with the culture and the amazing leadership at Edutopia. How'd you make the leap from one to the other? Was it a conscious decision to be like, "Enough is enough", or was it like, "I'm just going to search for something else?" What was the bridge between those two roles?
Elana Leoni (27:36): One of the things I haven't learned well and I'm starting to learn is when to say no, and just say I think I'm done. And it usually takes a big thing for me to be done somewhere. I just put my heart and soul into everything and I never know when is a good time to leave until it's almost too late until you're literally just like either depressed or your body's having panic attacks or whatever it may be that I've waited too long because I love the brand or what I was doing so much. That for me, I am now very conscious about trying to figure out what fuels me and what are the signals that burn me out, and constantly having a work life balance so I can maintain what I do and have joy.
So I think for me, like I actually quit my software job, my first ever job with not another job aligned and that was another thing. People were like, "You're crazy. What are you doing? You don't even have something lined up. You're going to die." I'm like "Oh my gosh", turns out that I felt so happy. And you know what, I went and just decided to go do catering and shuck oysters at an oyster bar in West Marin and just be happy for a little bit and figure out what would give me joy again, and Edutopia just came up. I actually didn't want to work there because they were the first job I interviewed for, and they were like "When can you start?" I'm like, "I don't really want to work anymore. They were just so gracious and they were so smart and I think some people have assumptions about nonprofits, or at least I did because I was young in my career and I always thought nonprofits don't have money and they lack focus, and sometimes they lack people with skill sets that you can learn from.
All of these are fundamentally wrong. I know this, but I was young in my career and when I got to interview with the people, I was just so inspired by them. I'm like, "Okay, let's work, but can you give me like a month?" They're like, "Okay, how about two weeks? How about one week" So anyways, eight years later at Edutopia, I can't thank them for believing in me, and I started as a membership coordinator, ended as a director, leading community, leading social media, and I can't thank them enough for the trust they put in me.
Adam Bellow (30:03): That's incredible. I mean, and I feel like it's so nice to be on the other side of it. Obviously, I didn't ever work at Edutopia, but I interacted with multiple people there, you mentioned Amy and Cindy and all those folks that I have nothing but warm feelings towards as well. It's nice to know that it's genuine and I feel like that obviously has set you up for taking that and moving it forward in your own business, which is very heartening just to hear that.
Elana Leoni (30:32): Yeah, the number one value I want to hold with my team as much as possible is we're humans first. We're people first and we're not just saying it because it sounds good to put on LinkedIn or whatever. It's really, are we ok? Are we having joy first and foremost and are we having that work life balance that we all lacked? Because I never want to be in a position that one of my team members leave and they don't know who they' are identity wise because they've attached themselves to the brand so much. I don't want that anymore. So I'm really all about let's create a safe place for people, and most of the people that come to our organization have been in traumatic work environments, have been in things that they're still recovering from, and so I want this to be the safe haven of just doing good work.
Adam Bellow (31:21): That's awesome. That's such a respectable thing to aspire to. I love it. So we're going to go to level four, which is all about passion, and clearly, anyone has been listening to you for the last however many minutes we've been chatting, is very aware that you are a passionate person and someone who leads from the heart. So I'm really curious, what are you most passionate about right now in education? I know you've worked with many brands and do different things and so when I say that question, it's like it could be something that you are trying to share with others or kind of shine the light on for others or something that even you personally are looking forward to learning more about yourself.
Elana Leoni (32:04): Yeah, I like this question because I think depending on the year you ask, it might change a lot.
Adam Bellow (32:11): That's great.
Elana Leoni (32:12): There're certain things for me that have never changed. It's never been a tech tool. It's never been like, "Oh, now you can do this cool thing with VR or the metaverse or, not to discount what technology can do, but I've never really been about the ebb and flow of the technology. I've been about meaningful tech integration and making sure that it matters and it connects students to real life. But I'm not that expert there. I work with a lot of tech brands that doesn't get me as excited as equity and access and social justice have. Just coming from my background, education is riddled with a have and have nots and it's set up, the system is set up and it's still such a hard thing to penetrate when you think about how schools get money and don't get money. It fundamentally is riddled with equity and access issues, and even ed tech plays a role in that, right because they have to make money and all of these things. So I look at what types of technology and specifically ed techs and education organizations are helping bridge that gap. So, I mean I could go on and on about the things I do there, but I always ask those tough questions for people that also want to work with us. It's like, how are you not creating more of that divide? And we saw so many amazing things happen within the pandemic as it relates to technology and equity and access but we also saw some bad things happen too. So that's why it's such a nuanced answer, right? Like we saw the rise of learning pods come up right and private tutoring and all the things that most everyday kids couldn't afford.
Adam Bellow (34:00): Yeah.
Elana Leoni (34:00): Right but then we saw them thriving in different ways too. So I don't want to ignore that, but equity and access a hundred million percent still drives me criminal justice, social justice, the pipeline from K-12 education to incarceration fundamentally bothers me to no end.
Adam Bellow (34:21): Yeah.
Elana Leoni (34:22): You can look at any stat and look at the trends and they're sobering and we need to do better as a society. So that's why I've done a lot of work within the justice system. My father, personally, also spent eight years of his life incarcerated. So it's like a really close thing to me of knowing that when you have incarceration, it affects not just that one person, and it affects society as a whole and so many children And this is a wrong stat, but at one point it was thrown around and I don't know why I'm going to repeat it, but there's a majority of children that have parents incarcerated that actually go to prison and follow in their footsteps, and at one time it was 70%, but I could never cite that source.
Adam Bellow (35:06): Oh wow.
Elana Leoni (35:07): But, but it's huge.
Adam Bellow (35:09): Yeah.
Elana Leoni (35:10): Because you leave kids without parents and you leave them as potential role models that are in prison and those parents are actually going to, if they don't have organizations like the Mount Town College or things that I've been a part of, sometimes you just learn to be a better criminal in prison.
Adam Bellow (35:30): Yeah.
Elana Leoni (35:30): Which is fundamentally the opposite.
Adam Bellow (35:33): Yeah.
Elana Leoni (35:33): So I would say like education access were big proponents of Educolor, love what Jose's doing and his team there.
Adam Bellow (35:41): That's incredible.
Elana Leoni (35:42): We have a foundation, it's called the LCG Foundation and we also privately sponsor organizations like that.
Adam Bellow (35:48): That's awesome. I didn't know that.
Elana Leoni (35:48): Educolor has a summit come up - We have clients like the University Innovation Alliance that are a hundred percent focused on getting other universities to commit to equity and access and making sure that we don't forget people to graduate them as well because so many types of students, if they're lucky, get to start college but the types of students that don't finish are generally students of color, low income students. Once it broke my heart to realize one of the more popular reasons a low income student doesn't get their diploma, it's because they have library fines.
Adam Bellow (36:28): Yeah.
Elana Leoni (36:29): And it seems so silly.
Adam Bellow (36:30): Isn't that insane?
Elana Leoni (36:31): They can't afford them.
Adam Bellow (36:32): Yeah.
Elana Leoni (36:32): And so they talk, these organizations within the University Innovation Alliance talk about these things and together create policies that are more inclusive, and that gives me goosebumps just talking about, right? So those things fuel me. Another thing that fuels me is treating educators as humans, as human beings first and foremost, and not because we want it to trickle down to student performance and all of this crap. We treat educators as human beings because it's the right thing to do. It's the respectful thing to do, and we should be elevating that profession and supporting them as much as possible. So we have built out a community called Nourish teachers. It's all about spreading joy to them as human beings and potentially reinvigorating them if that's what they need to just be there in support with non-judgment and kindness and love. And I know that sounds really touchy feely, but boy, it works because this profession, I don't need to tell you all listening, most people are not kind at times and you get the brunt of it a lot and people don't realize how many parents come to you and all the things that you have to deal with and that you don't get supported or recognized for the decades of service. That bothers me. Adam why don't they even get a coaster or something after 10 years?
Adam Bellow (37:55): Well I think, I mean, it goes back to your earlier point though. I think people are not doing it for a thank you, and I think that the profession, unfortunately, it's a backwards thing where it's like, people or educators are not usually compensated in a way that we would consider to be incentivized and it is extremely stressful and that's why we're having such a retention issue right now on top of getting through the pandemic. For those couple of months in the beginning I feel like it was like the teachers are heroes and then all of a sudden it became back to the same old stuff. But I don't want to lose what you said though, because you mentioned a couple things that I think were just brilliant, and big shout out to Jose. I love what he's done with Educolor. He's also an incredible New York City based educator, a math teacher who's done incredible things and started Educolor and just a great organization. So for those listening that haven't heard of Educolor, please definitely check out their organization. But you mentioned something else, you talked about earlier the prison, the K-12 to prison pipeline, and you talked about the statistic, whether it's 70% or not, it's obviously a high percentage higher than it should be for sure. But then you talked about your own experience and just to kind of shed light on the fact where not only is it, I don't want to get sappy and be like, oh, it's a success story, but like talking to you Elana and hearing you talk about your origins and your story and how what you do on a daily basis is work to elevate the voice of educators and to be involved in good things and make the world better, whether it be through Nourish Teachers or whether it be through your organization and through the philanthropic arm of it. That's remarkable. I mean, and I'm sure everyone picked up on it, but I just wanted to tell you that just is incredible to kind of be the antithesis of a statistic and to make something that is better than and helps more people than you can imagine. So, I know I'm interviewing you, but I didn't know all of that story and it just strikes me as remarkable, and I just wanted to say that. That's awesome.
Elana Leoni (39:59): Thank you. Don't make me cry.
Adam Bellow (40:01): I won't. We can.
Adam Bellow (40:04): Edit out all the crying. I know, I know. I am too, and that's the sad part. So, you've been dropping knowledge and wisdom for the entire time we've been chatting, but I do have to bring you up to level five for the best piece of advice that you've gotten in your career. So if you wouldn't mind sharing that with our listeners, what would it be?
Elana Leoni (40:26): I kind of want to turn the tables a little bit and talk to your audience on this one if I can, and it does apply to me because I think throughout my career, and I still do, I don't know my worth. I still downplay. I'm humble to a fault. I will overly give, give, give until I'm burn out and my body rejects life, and I think that it, for all of you educators listening, it might really resonate. So knowing your worth and really owning what you do as a professional and having that, I say this also to my junior team members that have joined, is that you have the unique privilege to be a part of this and to have this vantage point or you work with Ed tech brands across the US doing XYZ you might be young in your career, but know your worth, own it. I got interview on my podcast Nick Provenzano and he talked about knowing your worth and also negotiating with Ed tech brands if they ask you to do something and saying, we don't get paid in sweatshirts, thank you very much, or t-shirts. Your time is just as valuable if not more, and when you are talking to any brand or anything else, you were giving them something that they do not have internally and its so, so important.
So I just want you to know that you are so valued and your expertise, even though you might not feel it in society at times, you are so important and so valued. So being able for me to continue, it's a struggle for me too of owning our career and our experiences and knowing your worth and to be able to communicate that and respect your own time and boundaries. I think within Nourish Teachers, we talk a lot about that community. It's a private community on Facebook for U S K-12 teachers and you can find it on Facebook if you just put in the search but things about boundaries because if you don't fuel yourself first, you can't really help others too. So I think that's a big thing, and when I was younger at Edutopia and so much of like just finding my voice and being comfortable speaking my voice and speaking my truth, and I still struggle with that as well. We're all growing as human beings, but I think if you create PLNs and PLCs that are supportive, they can help you along this journey of balance, knowing your worth and finding your voice because all of you helped do that for me, Adam. Even people that we have seen throughout the conference circuit, I remember speaking to Rafranz one time, Rafranz Davis and she probably doesn't remember this, but she says, "I've really enjoyed seeing you gain a voice over the years", and it just stuck with me because I never thought I had a voice, I never thought what I had to say mattered. I know that sounds silly, but that's true. I represented a big ed tech brand. I didn't know, I didn't come from education. All I wanted to do was elevate your voices because what you guys were doing was so amazing, and I still feel that way and a hundred percent guides who I am. I'm about connecting and elevating voices as much as possible.
Adam Bellow (43:47): But I think in doing that, I mean, and another shout out, I love Rafranz, I haven't caught up with her in far too long, but another great voice in ed tech and a genuine one. And I think that comment is so true and meaningful, but I think that by doing the good work, you find your value. I love what Nick said about, "We don't get paid in sweatshirts", but at the same point, everyone starts somewhere and I remember the days where it was like, "Oh my gosh, I got a pen from so and so because they wanted me." I think it, that's great advice in hindsight. I think it's almost the journey to do it to get there and the parallel is I spoke at conferences for free for six, seven years before I ever got asked to go do something, and so it's like one of those moments where it's like, yeah, oh it does have value. Oh, that's interesting. I should have known that earlier. I love that. But I think it, in terms of what you've brought to the table, you've been able to be in the middle of it and so many amazing places and been a part of a really great org and the work that you did is incredible that is being fuel for, obviously the ability for you to go out and start your own business and do that, which is incredible.
Elana Leoni (45:08): Yeah. And I think, use your guiding light of what gives you joy, but continue to grow from there. So you may say, "Wow, I want to do this blog post for free, because it gives me joy and it gives me all this experience". Sure, on my side, on the corporate side, I'm trying to normalize paying educators for everything and going above and beyond. So no, I want to make that a standard regardless of if it gives you joy and you professionally develop, so I want the industry and it has somewhat evolved. I remember when I first started, it wasn't a norm to pay educators to blog or anything like that. So I want people to really figure out what gives you joy. What leaps do you want to take potentially in your career that might scare you just a little bit? I think that there's great organizations that help support educators and taking those little leaps. One is Edumatch with Sarah Thomas, where if you have a goal of being an author, like for me, I can't imagine being an author. It's just so fundamentally scary. I think there's probably people on this call going, I don't have time for that, and I love blogging, and I've written 1000s of blogs. Well, guess what, that's a book, right? It's just being able to work and connect with people that can help support you and EduMatch is a good organization. It's a 501C3 full of educators that become authors too. So just take a little bit of those leaps, but start growing your self-worth along the way too.
Adam Bellow (46:33): I love it.
Elana Leoni (46:34): And you're confidence too.
Adam Bellow (46:35): I love it. I think that's certainly great and sound advice for so many listening. Well, I mean, I think we've we've kind of run the gamut over here with origin stories and video games you played with grandma, and then some really heartfelt and impactful moments. So, I can't thank you enough for sharing a bit of your story with us and also sharing the work that you've done, but also the work that you're doing and have yet to do. It's always, always wonderful to chat and connect. So before we sign off, would you tell our listeners where they can find you and follow along with your either your work online and how they can get in touch with you online?
Elana Leoni (47:17): Sure. I love connecting with educators and learning from all of you. So you can do that most easily on Twitter. So I'm @elanaleoni at Twitter, and our group is called Leoni. My last name, L E O N I group so @leonigroup on Twitter. You can also find any of us on LinkedIn. We're also on Facebook, Pinterest, all of the things too but if you really want to collaborate, I still am old school and love connecting and learning from you alongside on Twitter. We're also at leonieconsultinggroup.com. So I think I covered it. I just thank you, Adam, for having me on. This has been a pleasure.
Adam Bellow (48:06): It’s been so much fun. So thanks again and everyone until the next time, game on.