Driven Leaders Podcast
The Driven Leaders Podcast shares inspiring stories from successful individuals across industries. Tune in to discover their secrets to success and unique journeys, gaining valuable insights and motivation along the way.
Driven Leaders Podcast
Driven Leaders Podcast - Jennifer Friend
She was a successful trial lawyer and partner at a major firm! Now, Jennifer Friend is the CEO of Project Hope Alliance, a non-profit organization dedicated to ending youth homelessness. Discover her inspiring journey and unique approach to leadership on the Driven Leaders Podcast.
Jennifer shares valuable insights from her career transition, including:
The Power of Authenticity: Learn how embracing her personal story of homelessness empowered Jennifer to become a more effective leader.
Finding Your Calling: Discover how a powerful sermon and a moment of self-reflection led Jennifer to leave her law career and pursue her true passion.
Overcoming Fear and Doubt: Uncover how Jennifer faced her fears and took a leap of faith to make a meaningful difference in her community.
Leading with Empathy and Compassion: Learn how Jennifer's personal experiences shape her leadership style and drive her commitment to serving others.
Tune in to hear an inspiring story of transformation, courage, and the importance of aligning your work with your values!
#DrivenLeaders #ProjectHopeAlliance #Homelessness #Nonprofit #Leadership #Motivation #Inspiration #CareerTransition #Faith #Authenticity #Empathy #OrangeCounty #Podcast
and that their worth is inherent, the better our kids are able to internalize their worth and hopefully figure out that they are successful because of who. They are not. Despite it, we are making sure they have everything they need for the dorms. They want to do an internship in a lab over the summer that doesn't pay? Then we're figuring that out because we know they want to go to grad school. We have to be in it until our youth are able to be financially independent established adults.
Speaker 1:These kids are doing these things themselves. They just need the opportunity to show up as themselves, and so our work is deep and we are committed to our youth, so we would rather serve less youth in a transformational way until we can, and we'll just continue to build and grow.
Speaker 2:Hi, I'm Jon Patterson with Patterson Autos, and welcome to the Driven Leader Podcast, where we talk to leaders, leaders on our team, leaders in the community that are driven to do more, and we define leaders, like Craig Grishel does, as leaders are people of influence. So, whether you're in charge of two people, three people, five people, hundreds of people, if you're influencing them to do more, be more. We want to honor you, and today I am so grateful to be joined by my friend, jennifer Friend, the CEO of Project Hope Alliance. Welcome to us.
Speaker 1:Good morning. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2:Good morning to you, my friend. It's so great to have you, but I want to, before we get into what you do and how you do it, I want to share that Jennifer and I had met briefly before, but the first time we got a chance to really dive in was at a hot summer day Very hot, I mean, maybe the hottest day of last year it was, I think so.
Speaker 2:Where we were judging a bunch of homes for homemade and I think that we were just grateful to get inside a cool restaurant on 105 degree day and 100 degrees of humidity.
Speaker 1:It was crazy.
Speaker 2:In that conversation I got a chance to learn a little bit more about you and about Project Hope Alliance, and so that's a conversation we'll get into in a minute, but also for those of you watching. We are proud parents of-.
Speaker 1:Ducks, ducks, ducks yes.
Speaker 2:Yes, if you are an Oregon Duck fan, we are with you. Yes, so both of our kids, your son, your daughter, parker is a sophomore, correct she's a junior now, which is crazy.
Speaker 1:Which is unreal, and my son, connor, graduated from University of Oregon and both of them played in the marching band, which is super cool, and they did that in high school the same high school. Go Sailors.
Speaker 2:Go Sailors exactly. So they were just far enough apart whatever four years or so where they didn't interact. But we have had very similar parenting experiences throughout high school and college and it's really, it's really fun to share that affinity with you. So you and your husband, myself and Julie we get a chance to, you know, have that love for the Ducks.
Speaker 1:Yes, the season didn't end the way we wanted it to, but we did win the Big Ten the first time in, so I'm going to say that that's something to be very proud of.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and they're going to be, you know assuming. Well, if Ohio State beats Notre Dame, Oregon will be the only one lost team out there, so they'll still have that to go for. Let's forget about the first half of the Rose Bowl, shall we?
Speaker 1:Yes, I think so. I'll just think about the Rose Parade and how wonderful that was.
Speaker 2:It was beautiful pageantry, we love it all. But yeah, that first half of the Rose Bowl wasn't quite what we were looking for, was it? So walk me through your backstory. So, for those of you listening for the first time, and those of you that aren't familiar with Jennifer's backstory, tell us about your family, tell us about how we're sitting in front of each other, and we'll go into Project Hope Alliance a little bit more, but I want our team to know more about you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I grew up in Orange County. I went to school actually in Newport Mesa Unified School District. I'm one of four kids. I have three little brothers. I say little, but they're six, four, six, three, six, two and all played college football two linemen, so not real small, not too tiny.
Speaker 1:I'm the only girl in the oldest and my dad was an entrepreneur. In the 70s he had this crazy idea that one day everyone would walk around with their own independent phone and he worked for Motorola, was not independently wealthy entrepreneur and we had some really good times and we lived on East Ocean Front in Newport Beach. I went to Newport Elementary for fourth, fifth and sixth grade, but then we had some really, really rough times and so when I was in sixth grade was the first time my family got evicted and we ended up living in motels in Garden Grove and Westminster, up and down Harbor and Beach Boulevard, off and on, really until I graduated high school. I went to Huntington Beach High School, go Oilers although my household is now a sailor household and I went to community college, worked full time, transferred to UCI, like we have all these. Oh you are.
Speaker 2:You've got all the mascots. I'm impressed.
Speaker 1:Yes, you know, and I worked 50 hours a week and went to school full time, while I was at UCI as well. Wow, and then I wanted to be a lawyer because I had decided, while we were living at the Tropic Motel, that I personally needed a job where I could make enough money to buy a house, put my kids through school and not have to worry about not having enough money or enough food.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And my dad always said I should get paid by the word, so being a lawyer, perfect. I went to Whittier Law School when it was in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I was a trial lawyer. When it was in Los Angeles and I was a trial lawyer, I made partner at 38 because I was. I kind of felt like I was behind the ball because it took me seven years to get through undergrad while working and all that stuff. But you know it's illogical as we get older but when we're younger, Right.
Speaker 2:The 20 something version of yourself is like I've got to go, I've got to go. But the truth of the matter is one of the smartest guys I ever talked to said your twenties are a time for education, your thirties are a time for clarification and your forties and fifties are a time for maturation. And for you, while you were going through it, you're thinking okay, I got to get through this. But the truth of the matter is, by the time you're 30 years old, hey, figure out what you want to be doing.
Speaker 1:No, that's absolutely right, and you know the wisdom we gain in our 50s is if we could like ship that back to our younger selves, but I always knew that there was something that I was being called to do.
Speaker 1:I didn't really necessarily know what it was, and the fact that I had experienced homelessness for a lot of my childhood was something that my family, we hid. We didn't tell anyone, no one knew. We pretended like we were house sitting places and we created a narrative that was false about where we were living, and so I kind of grew up with this thought that if people knew what I'd really been through, that they would think my parents were weird. They would think I was weird and they would think I was undeserving of what I had accomplished, and so that was a narrative that I worked really hard to build up. I think about even the way I was a trial lawyer and there are not a lot of female litigation partners and I was in the construction industry as well.
Speaker 2:Also a male-dominated business right.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I armored up in Brooks Brothers like the best of them right, yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's interesting to be reflective about how even the way I dressed or even the way I wore my hair was really to try to eliminate any question that I belonged really to try to eliminate any question that I belonged and I spent a lot of energy kind of fighting what I now understand. I used to think that I was successful despite what I went through, and I now understand that I am successful because of what I went through and that shift I'm so grateful for. And if it weren't for having gone to Project Hope Alliance and completely upending my professional career, integrating all of myself into one person, I never would have, I think, fully appreciated that and been able, as a leader, to instill that in the leaders within our organization, leaders within our organization, because so many people show up to the workplace thinking that they have to compartmentalize who they are and it ends up reflecting an inauthenticity, ineffectiveness, so it could look like lack of commitment.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:Instead of and I'm not talking about like you don't have to walk in and tell your boss everything right. But they're who we are is why they hired us in the first place, right?
Speaker 2:Without a doubt.
Speaker 2:I mean, you are who you are, you know, with all your baggage and without all your baggage, and that's the person that you know we all want to.
Speaker 2:You know we've got roughly 300 teammates here and we try and consistently say is hey, look, stuff's going to happen and we want to be able to walk alongside you. We just created a chaplain position at all of our stores so that if somebody is having a rough time at their home with their spouse, with their kids, with their family members that you know an HR manager isn't really built for that, but you know you can close the door with a chaplain and they can say, hey, let me help you walk through this. And we found, in the short period of time that we've had it, a lot of very rewarding discussions and I've talked to a few of my teammates that they've been really happy about it. And back to your work it's you know we're all flawed, right, and you know, I think the sooner we all realize that we've all got baggage, whatever that might be, the sooner you embrace it, the sooner you can get moving forward right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:So for you, okay. So I remember being awestruck. So on the hot summer day, we're inside thank goodness we've got air conditioning as we're eating Italian food for lunch. But you're sharing the story and I was totally unfamiliar with it, right, and you said, hey look, I was doing this, partner, attorney, construction, all of these things and the gentleman that was sitting across from us.
Speaker 2:yeah, steve morrow, steve morrow, shout out to steve, great guy, yes, and and I know that you've done some work with him a little bit in that space and for you to share that you've been doing all of that and you made the change. Walk our listeners through how that change even came to pace, because it doesn't seem like a very logical thing for most people, right?
Speaker 1:It's not logical. It was absolutely, unquestionably, a faith decision for me, so it is not logical. So logic doesn't dictate that you take a 75% pay cut the month that you're being promoted to the highest level of partnership within your firm. But back to me feeling like there was something, that I had a calling, but I didn't necessarily understand what it was, even when I was in seventh grade. So I first found out. My brother one of my brothers called me and said I just watched this thing called the Motel Kids of Orange County on HBO and it's this documentary about this school that serves kids experiencing homelessness that are living in motels in Orange County. I need you to watch this. He's like I don't know what we're supposed to do with this, but I need you to watch it and then pray about what we're supposed to do and I was like all right, I'm in Sure why not?
Speaker 2:I'll do it.
Speaker 1:So I watched the documentary and and I saw kids that were going through homelessness and believing that that was going to be their whole story. Understandably so, because when you're a kid- you don't have the blessing of hindsight or foresight.
Speaker 1:You're in that moment and something really struck me that one of the things that got my brothers and I through this experience was our faith in knowing that this didn't define us and it wasn't our whole story, it was a chapter. So one of my brothers and I decided that we were just going to like bust in to one of the Project Hope board meetings.
Speaker 2:So we bust in.
Speaker 1:We're like, hey, we just kind of want to see. You know, my brother had his own business and like where does I don't know, we just want to see what's. And it was a group of like amazingly beautifully hearted folks that had partnered with the First Presbyterian Church in Orange and they were providing clothing. They had a really small food pantry at this school and they were providing clothing. They had a really small food pantry at this school and they were providing transportation to and from motels and shelters to this one school.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So their total programming budget was like $30,000 a year, gotcha. So like any good type A overachiever, I walked out of that meeting the secretary of the board. I love it, yes.
Speaker 2:I'm jumping in.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, the board, I love it. Yes, so I'm jumping in. Well, yeah, so, and I will say that one of the things I've learned is I feel like we are called to show up and God will reveal to us what the next pieces are. So I did tell the board, though hey, nobody knows this story about my family, so this is between us. Like, I'm not going to be a public spokesperson. I will work hard, I will advocate for our youth, but just FYI. So a year or so later, we had partnered with UCI to build this mock, fully life-size motel room art piece that was based on the tropic motel room that my family of six lived in for nine months so this is while you're still an attorney doing all yeah and nobody knows, like nobody really knows my story oh, gotcha all right
Speaker 1:um, and so my dad died suddenly when this happened. At the same time I I had convinced Orange County Register reporter to talk about the synergistic nature of the business community donating money my brother's businesses had donated $10,000 to pay for the materials UCI had donated. The head of scenic design at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts and all of the grad students to build this thing, an anthropologist to make it like, researched it and then the nonprofit needing to tell a story and how, when we bring all three together, like anything is possible.
Speaker 2:Right, absolutely.
Speaker 1:So back to my suiting myself up. I suited up that day because I felt really anxious and nervous, because every Sunday, for the like three months prior, the whole sermon series was on what is God uniquely calling you to do what? While I am chair of the Project Hope Alliance board, looking for a CEO, so I meet with a reporter I prayed before I got out of the car because I knew that something was up, and so my prayer was that Jennifer Friend would step aside and that whatever God wanted to do would be the thing that would lead Love it.
Speaker 1:It was very scary for me to pray that.
Speaker 2:Scary for anybody, right? But yes, in your situation, right, it's almost like an out-of-body experience.
Speaker 1:It was, and so I show up, I introduce myself to the reporter and we're in the motel room and if you've ever been to Second Harvest Food Bank, it was there for 10 years.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So that art piece that was in their main floor, that's me.
Speaker 2:No, I did not know. Okay, I've been to Second Harvest, I don't know, dozens of times. Yeah, had no idea. Yeah, so that's Sinking the story, yeah so that's us.
Speaker 1:So I'm sitting on the bed with a reporter and the reporter is like I can't get over how personal and specific this feels Like. How did you get this kind of a feeling? And I said, off the record, I said I lived here for nine months. This is based on my family's story and for nine months this is based on on my family's story.
Speaker 1:And he goes Jennifer, that's the whole story. Are you ready to tell it? And I said no. I said but God is so, you know what, let's do it. So I told the story for the very first time. It ended up on the front page of the register before it came out. That little girl who was in seventh grade that thought that kids would think I was weird or wouldn't like me if they knew that I was living in a motel called an emergency partner meeting, so I could tell my partners hey, this is the program. Yeah. And they were like why are you telling us this? Like, okay, like. But in my head I thought that they were gonna be like oh yeah, she's not one of us. Like what I don't know.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:I mean, you know, Satan does a great job of creating all kinds of stories.
Speaker 2:Without a doubt, and all of a sudden, this false narrative is existing in your noggin.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I remember calling a couple of my biggest clients and I was like I just want to let you know, the story's going to come out on the front page of tomorrow's paper. And one of them started laughing and he was like I knew there was something that drove you more than any other attorney I have ever had. And this is like a major, major underground construction company. And he was like yes, and I was like so this is okay and he goes okay.
Speaker 2:I love it.
Speaker 1:You're my lawyer for life and it was shifting that narrative right that I wasn't successful despite what I went through, but because of it and looking at it in a different way. So once it came out in the newspaper I realized I'd be at cocktail parties and people were kind of like they didn't know what to do with the fact that I had been homeless.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Because they had all these preconstructive narratives.
Speaker 2:For sure.
Speaker 1:Of the types of people who experience homelessness.
Speaker 2:Without a doubt.
Speaker 1:I fit none of them. And then I'm in church one Sunday and the sermon is on Esther and talking about how Esther lived in two worlds. She was the queen, so she had access to all of that, for sure. But she was Jewish, so she was part of the other, so she had the ability to bring both together. And for such a time as this in the history of the nation, god was calling her to rise up in the way that she inhabited two worlds to lead people forward.
Speaker 1:And then kelly commisher, who was preaching the sermon, who is a very dear friend of mine says God does not call the equipped, he equips the call. And I sat there and I just started crying because I knew exactly what I needed to do. And my mom happened to be in church with me that Sunday and I went home and told my husband that God wanted me to resign from the partnership of my law firm and be the CEO of Project Hope, which at the time had one employee and served like 35 kids and had like no budget, with a budget of 30 grand or whatever it is.
Speaker 1:And he said how much does that pay, which is fair.
Speaker 2:We had a brand new child right.
Speaker 1:So we had a house on a quarter acre in Newport Beach. We had a brand new baby. Our son now is 15, but then we had Parker.
Speaker 2:She was five.
Speaker 1:We had a mortgage that was reliant upon my income, absolutely All the things, and I'm like this is how much it pays? And he was like that's a 75% pay cut. And I said, I know, but I'm telling you that I'm really afraid of being disobedient. This is so clear, like I'd love to say that I was like, yay, you know no I was here.
Speaker 1:I was so, but I knew that God's faithfulness had been so present in my life up to that point that I would. I would be actively being disobedient and choosing to not believe that he would continue to be faithful in my life, and that wasn't something that I was willing to do. So my husband generously said so I'm going to say no right now, but give me a little bit to think about it.
Speaker 1:I need to marinate in this for a few minutes, please, or days, or weeks, or months, so he came back like a couple weeks later and he said I did the math and we could live on credit for a year because he sells real estate.
Speaker 2:So like that's not a guaranteed you know income, feast or famine sometimes, right, that's right, and so I left my book of business at the firm and I resigned.
Speaker 1:And January 1st 2013, I started as the CEO of Project Hope Alliance. I had a desk in a multi-purpose room of Skyview Elementary. I was fortunate to hire LaShawn High, who was a social worker, so he at least knew what he was doing, and we decided that we wanted to build a model of care that would be transformational for our kids and have them be the last ones in their family lineage to experience homelessness. And so we just decided that we would always do the right thing at the right time for the right reasons. We would never put our organization or ourselves at the center of the circle, but it would always be the kids, even if that seemed counterintuitive.
Speaker 1:Right but it would always be the kids, even if that seemed counterintuitive, right, and I'm so grateful to say that we served over a thousand last year. We're in three school districts, one charter school system, we have a 94% high school graduation rate for our kids, which is almost 30% above the national average and makes them 400% less likely to experience homelessness as adults, and this community has built us up into an organization of 30 full-time team members. That's pouring $3.4 million worth of programming every year into our community.
Speaker 2:So Okay, so one amazing I mean I just I'm sitting over here just awestruck of the basics that I knew and now, just even hearing it, I think maybe just hearing you go into the details it's wonderful to hear and walk us through. So what are the services that Project HOPE is providing these kids that are in compromised situations?
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of the things I learned sitting in that multi-purpose room of that one particular school was that and I had such a huge learning curve, right Like I come from, I was a trial lawyer for 13 years and now, all of a sudden, I'm running a nonprofit.
Speaker 2:You put me in a courtroom. I know what I'm doing, but yeah, over here, what the heck?
Speaker 1:I mean, it took me three hours to figure out how to print a letter on letterhead one day and I was just crying, thinking I'm such a moron Like I can't do this. So what I learned, though, was that the social services industry I guess because it is right Like we are a business, so oftentimes it requires people come to it in order to receive services. Our kids have zero agency when it comes to where they go how they get places right, any of that Right.
Speaker 1:But they come to school, and so in my mind, I thought this model of care that we're building, we need to build it so that it plugs into the public education system. So what we did was we created this model of care that has a 30 youth experiencing homelessness who are assigned to one case manager. That one case manager has their own office on a public high school campus.
Speaker 2:So how do you identify those 30 kids?
Speaker 1:There's lots of ways. Teachers identify them for us when kids are registered for school. There are questionnaires that go out. Sometimes, parents will indicate that they're experiencing homelessness. A lot of our janitorial teams are seeing kids show up on the school campus at 5.30 in the morning wearing the same thing that they saw them showing up at 5.30 in the morning the day before.
Speaker 2:Gotcha, because I imagine you know for these kids, just like you, you know they're not raising their hand saying, hey, give me help. But the teachers, the janitorial staff, they can help guide what the real need is and you could say, yeah, susie over there or Jimmy over there, there's all the signs in the world that they're experiencing this. Probably a kid that you should be talking to.
Speaker 1:That's exactly right, and so Newport Harbor High School was actually so.
Speaker 2:Principal Bolton said yes to us before we Shout out to Sean Bolton Great job, Love you bud.
Speaker 1:Yes, he basically decided he was going to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. Possibly I mean I'm sure he asked for permission. But he gave us a office on the Newport Harbor High School campus five days a week that had its own bathroom inside the office. So we have a small food pantry, we have a hygiene pantry, we have clothing and what happens is so if Susie, like, let's say, Miss Adams, is like guy, Susie's always hungry. She's falling asleep a lot of times. I know she's wearing like the same clothes.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And she has a hard time turning in assignments that are like externally required to have go to the library or do things yeah. So Miss Adams will say to Susie hey, susie Lupita is over in room 103 and she's part of this organization that's a student support organization perfect I'm gonna let you leave class and just go check in with her and see if there's anything that lupita can do to like. I don't know if you have any needs or anything's going on in your life. So suzy goes to our office.
Speaker 1:There's no signage, because back to right, absolutely, I know right so there's no signage and lupita's just like hi, like you know, this is my name and Miss Adams thought maybe something was going on Like is there anything you want to talk about In the course of building that rapport and that trust, susie will reveal yeah, we're living in a car. Hey, my family of like five is renting the floor of the kitchen at one bedroom apartment over near Shalimar and I only can sleep between 2 and 5 am because people are in the kitchen until 2 and after 5 am. So then Lupita walks alongside Susie and does everything, from going into the classroom and advocating for her to be able to catch up work, figuring out how do we get tutoring. Partner with UCI, different universities, to get specialized tutoring. Also, if Susie has mental health needs, we have a lot of partners that we drive our kids actually to therapy. We won young girls an amazing track star, but she was wearing Converse that had holes in the bottom running track in Converse.
Speaker 2:It doesn't work that way. It does not work that way.
Speaker 1:So we had partnered with the Chargers. They had donated all of this equipment specialized for all of our youth who were in sports. Susie got a whole bag full of running shoes, athletic wear, all that stuff. So it's really showing up and doing life with Susie until she's 24. Because our work is deep, we are truly in it for the transformational generational changing. So when Susie graduates high school, then we find out while she's there you want to go to college, you want to go to culinary school, you want.
Speaker 1:We have a lot of youth that are incredible artists. So we're buying them art supplies, we're buying the musical instruments, we're ensuring they can go to science camp, we're ensuring that they can go to prom, that they have a senior picture, that they have a senior yearbook. As much as we can normalize their experience to let them know that they are not defined by their housing status and that their worth is inherent, the better our kids are able to internalize their worth and hopefully figure out that they are successful because of who they are, not despite it. Yeah, much sooner than like 52.
Speaker 2:Walk me through age 24. Okay, I get 18. I think the logical thought process is 18, maybe 19.
Speaker 1:But walk me through why 24. When our kids go to college, their needs change and morph, and they become different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they do.
Speaker 1:And when our youth that we serve become 18, a lot of the restrictions that maybe some unhealthy parent relationships might have placed around our ability to help them become eliminated, gotcha, so we're able to actually help them find their own permanent, stable housing. Advocating for them to be able to get a lease, we are making sure they have everything they need for the dorms. They want to do an internship in a lab over the summer that doesn't pay? Then we're figuring that out because we know they want to go to grad school and the way you get to grad school is by doing one of these internships.
Speaker 1:And unfortunately right now the competitive ones don't pay. So when we're looking at actually ending the cycle of generational homelessness, we have to be in it until our youth are able to be financially independent, established adults. And 24 just seems to kind of be the number.
Speaker 2:No, it seems like a logical play I was at a meeting the other day as it relates to foster kids, and that was. They say that one of the biggest challenges is when foster kids get out of the foster system at 18, they have no direction. That's right and that you know the massive numbers like 80% of them are on drugs, in jail or dead, and so that time between 18 and 24 is invaluable.
Speaker 1:It is and unfortunately, most of the nonprofit sector shuts down at 18. So again, and by doing the landscaping of the nonprofit sector when I was just you know, one thing that was a great skill that I learned as a trial lawyer was my ability to absorb a lot of information and become an expert on a subject that I had never even heard of in a short amount of time.
Speaker 1:So I just ingested, digested and analyzed a lot of information and so we started committing to our youth to age 24. Well before others started doing it, because I saw a huge dearth of services, I was like, well, what happens? And now that I am a parent of a 20 year old, I know like the needs change, the guidance changes, the opportunity to speak into their life and and help support it changes. And you know, if I had had Project Hope Alliance when I was in undergrad, it wouldn't have taken me seven years, Sure Right.
Speaker 2:Well, and you know, I just think about that time, you know, as we talk about our kids, not just the similarities of Harbor and Oregon, but I think about that time where age 14 to 18, it's their friends, it's all those activities, and so they have that piece of the world and then, whether they go off to college or community college or whatever, their situation is that formative time between 18 and 22,. It's amazing, you see, the personalities morph more and more and the life experiences are different. Right, and we always joke that when our son went away to college at about November, december, all of a sudden he called my wife Julie and he said hey, you know, when you told me about such and such, you were right about that. And all of a sudden, my wife Julie and he said, hey, you know, when you told me about such and such.
Speaker 2:you know you were right about that and all of a sudden my wife put the phone on mute and said get over here. He said we were right about it, right. So you know kids are so headstrong at that time and your ability to walk alongside them well past, you know, high school, I think, has got to be so transformative.
Speaker 1:It is, I mean, and transformative was what we're looking for got to be so transformative. It is, I mean, and transformative is what we're looking for. So we're not trying to be the biggest nonprofit in Orange County. We're not trying to see, you know, we have wait lists at our schools, so we have wait lists of districts that want us to come onto their campuses. So it's just a matter of getting more resources so that we can then scale. More resources so that we can then scale, and I really do believe that we are. That's where we're going to be, because we're right now touted as one of the nation's models for best practices for ending generational homelessness, because people can't touch our high school graduation rates and I go back to that point not because Project HOPE is not making our kids smarter.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:They're not all of a sudden doing well in class.
Speaker 2:The IQ didn't just go up because of the tutoring.
Speaker 1:No, we're just eliminating the barriers so that they can show up as themselves, so that they're not showing up as someone who didn't get sleep or they're not showing up on the track as with someone who has holes in converse. And we have kids. One of our young ladies is. She was one of the best kickers in the state of California. She got a full ride, scholarship to college.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:And one of he actually went to Newport Harbor High School football player. He was also a kicker. He had the opportunity to go because he was scouted at a game to go to a kicker camp in Las Vegas and the guy was like, if you can get him there, so we paid for that. We paid for he and his mom to stay in a motel that was there. We paid for the kicker camp, we made sure he had all the equipment he needed and he went to school on a scholarship like these things.
Speaker 1:These kids are doing these things themselves. They just need the opportunity to show up as themselves, and so our work is deep and we are committed to our youth. So we would rather serve less youth in a transformational way until we can and we'll just continue to build and grow, as opposed to diluting the work that we do.
Speaker 2:That makes sense. Go deep as much as you can in the places that you can until you can expand beyond that. I love that. So I want to be mindful of your time and the schedule, but let's talk about what's next. So is what's next taking it from whatever it is, 10 schools to 15 schools to 20 schools Is that what's next?
Speaker 1:So what's next, and now at the same time, is that CalOptima just awarded us a $2.1 million systems change grant Bingo.
Speaker 2:I love it the first time. Congratulations.
Speaker 1:Thank you. It's the first time they've ever issued a systems change grant and we literally wrote our organizational vision as the grant application and they fully funded it. And our vision is that, within Orange County, orange County's public school system is devised in a way that allows for our students experiencing homelessness to thrive. So we're doing everything right now, from educating educators, administrators, school nurses, school security personnel on how to identify and refer students experiencing homelessness.
Speaker 2:Just like that janitor, just like the teacher Adams right.
Speaker 1:That's right and we are working to create one questionnaire for all of Orange County public schools to truly get students experiencing homelessness identified, because right now the way they're asking the question is different depending on what school district you're in. Newport Mesa has just revamped it and it is very dignity based. It says you know which one of these housing experiences is most like yours and you check a box, instead of what's in most school districts, which is are you currently homeless?
Speaker 2:Yeah right.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't know if social services is going to show up at my motel room. I don't know if it's a crime for me to live in a motel with my kids. So I'm not going to check that box, which means that we're not allocating the right amount of resources, but also shifting the thought mentality from deficit-based to asset-based. Like you want an entrepreneur, pick somebody who has had to reverse engineer something into being.
Speaker 2:Without a doubt Right.
Speaker 1:And those are our youth. So this work that we're doing in actually building out a coordinated system of care for students experiencing homelessness in Orange County, we're looking to scale that across the country.
Speaker 2:That is spectacular. Well, for those that are listening to us and our conversation. The truth of the matter is, jennifer, I wish I could talk to you for the next two hours because I am so fascinated and for us, we're super involved in the Orange County Rescue Mission and walking alongside those folks. We've had a number of graduates and even children's of the graduates that are working with us and we're pouring into. So I think our interests align significantly. But for somebody watching this and hearing your story for the first time, how can they help?
Speaker 1:So they could go to projecthopeallianceorg. We have a volunteer page. We have volunteer opportunities throughout the year. We're getting ready, believe it or not, to start gearing up for our summer enrichment for our youth. When school closes, we open up even bigger.
Speaker 2:Perfect.
Speaker 1:So there are lots of opportunities to volunteer. We take our kids surfing to the beach, to science camp, bowling lots of opportunities to volunteer. We take our kids surfing to the beach, to science camp, bowling all of those different things. So someone could either donate to make those enrichment opportunities possible or they could volunteer to help us bring them into being. Maybe they are someone who has a connection that they might want to make, like they have a restaurant and they would love to bring our kids back into the kitchen to show them what it might look like to be in the culinary arts, all of those types of things.
Speaker 1:So it's projecthopeallianceorg and if they go on there, we'd love to welcome them as a member of what we lovingly refer to as Team KID and really continue to end the cycle of homelessness, one child at a time.
Speaker 2:Well, we know that you've got a huge fan here and Team KID love to be part of those members.
Speaker 2:So we will definitely, in our automotive organization, be supporting you and what you are doing. But we are so grateful for your story, so grateful for you sharing, so grateful you're sharing your time and so excited about next steps, because it feels to me like this is just getting started and what you have been able to accomplish so far and your leap of faith is tremendous. I am so in awe of that. I think about some of the risks that I take as an entrepreneur. You know, when I left corporate Toyota to become a car dealer and working and scrambling the hundred hour weeks and that type of stuff, I felt like I had a safety net and my wife was super supportive in it. But your situation and mine are similar but different, and I think about those that are listening and watching this. The risk that you took had to have been you know, you and your husband having long conversations, but the passion that you have for the cause that you have so impassionately embraced far outweighs, you know, the income that was lost in that short period of time.
Speaker 1:Oh, I mean I never could have done it without Rob. I mean my husband and I just celebrated our 29th wedding anniversary.
Speaker 2:Happy anniversary, thank you.
Speaker 1:But it's hard. It's hard work, but the best work is hard, and I am so grateful at 50, almost 55, to know that God has given me this opportunity to live and walk into my calling. And I think that all of us can remember that he doesn't call the equipped, he equips the called. So if there's something that's on your heart to volunteer, an organization to volunteer for, but you think, shoot, I don't know, like I don't, just do it, just show up and you'll be absolutely amazed at what unfolds and you'll be absolutely amazed at what unfolds.
Speaker 2:Yeah, rule number one show up.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and show up and amazing things happen. Well, jennifer Friend gosh, I am so honored to have this time with you and I so look forward to all of our future conversations, and my guess is, from this, we're going to help you and the cause and Project Topa Alliance and Team KID become even more accessible to more places throughout Orange County.
Speaker 1:Thank you for all that you and your team does for our community.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, I appreciate you Well, appreciate your time and make it a great day.
Speaker 1:All right.
Speaker 2:Thank you for joining us on the Driven Leader Podcast with my friend, jennifer Friend, and all I can say is wow. The story is amazing. Her personal story, her willingness to share and grow and learn and not let the situation that happened with her as a youth define her, but allow that to be a motivation factor to create the career that she had the career as an attorney and a partner and making a switch to pour into the youth of Orange County. And watching Project Hope Alliance grow into what it is and what it will be is wonderful to watch. Jennifer, I am so grateful for you and I am so looking forward to growing alongside with you and supporting all that you and your team are doing. Thank you for listening to the Driven Leaders podcast and don't forget if you like what you heard, like, share, subscribe so that we can grow in the community even more. Make it a great day.