In our new research series Mobility Experiences, published in partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, we tackle some of the most foundational questions pertaining to economic mobility in the United States, including:

• What drives upward, downward or no mobility for most Americans?
• What narratives or perceptions of economic mobility do Americans hold?
• How can resources be better deployed to address structural barriers to economic mobility for all Americans?
• What is the impact on income of interventions that promote certain life experiences?

Foundational to economic mobility is the prospect of experiencing economic success, being valued in one’s community, and having the power and autonomy over one’s life path. For many Americans, economic mobility has been replaced by perpetual economic precarity. Many are often just one unforeseen expense away from falling into poverty, whether that be getting evicted, experiencing a major health crisis, or incurring a car repair cost, a majority of Americans will experience poverty at some point in their lives.[1] Poverty rates remain stubbornly high in the United States compared to other OECD countries. For the vast majority of Americans, the United States is not by most indicators a “land of opportunity” where one can assuredly expect upwards mobility in their lifetimes.

In the first report of our Mobility Experiences research series, we summarize a meta-analysis of more than 230 academic studies, along with a survey of 4,000+ Americans, to provide a holistic understanding of what drives economic mobility. Key findings reveal the relative impact that 28 important life experiences have on lifetime income. These “mobility experiences” span across nearly every aspect of a person’s life, from education, career, and finances to health, community, and relationships. Economic mobility is partially shaped before a person is ever born and influenced by systemic and structural factors which often outweigh the impact of personal actions and endeavors.

Through this research, we have found evidence of value across these 28 experiences, with Americans experiencing them in unique ways across their lifetimes, leading to varying economic trajectories. Though each of these experiences has important impacts on economic mobility, four experiences in particular were found to have significant evidence of average impact on lifetime earnings greater than 20%. These experiences include:

1. Pursuing/completing postsecondary education
2. Graduating with a degree in a high-paying field of study
3. Receiving mentorship during adolescence
4. Obtaining a first full-time job that offers opportunity for advancement

For the first time, we have been able to quantify the relative impacts of certain life experiences on economic mobility. We hope these findings are affirming for practitioners in the field, while also adding to our collective evidence base. This knowledge is not only critical to aligning stakeholders around a fact-base, but also to supporting calls for funding, policymaking, and scaling interventions that will have the greatest impact on advancing mobility and opportunity across the country. When we build systems that allow people to access critical supports—and basic human rights—like healthcare, education, high quality jobs, and thriving communities, people have the power to live the lives to which they aspire.  

We anticipate that stakeholders across the economic mobility field will benefit from Mobility Experiences research in four primary ways:

1. Frontline service organizations can utilize the findings to demonstrate the potential impact of their interventions when seeking funding support
2. Funders can utilize the findings to prioritize investments in economic mobility
3. Local decision makers can utilize the findings to prioritize policymaking and identify high potential interventions
4. Communication organizations can utilize the findings to shift widely held narratives about the drivers of economic mobility in the United States

Throughout 2024, Camber Collective and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will be releasing three reports as part of the Mobility Experiences research series. The reports will explore both the quantified impact of life experiences on lifetime income as well as the perspectives of thousands of Americans on what matters to advance individual and collective economic mobility in the United States. We will also dive into the current state of funding for economic mobility and common features of successful interventions.

The research can be found on the Mobility Experiences website. We encourage you to sign up for updates to stay up to date with upcoming releases. Read the Report

[1] Mark Robert Rank, Lawrence M. Eppard, and Heather E. Bullock, Poorly Understood: What America Gets Wrong About Poverty, Oxford Academic, 20 May 2021. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190881382.003.0001

The post Relative Impact of 28 Life Experiences that Drive Economic Mobility in the United States appeared first on Camber Collective.

The post Finding Prosperity for More: What Contributes to Lifetime Income? appeared first on Camber Collective.

… Rethinking Think Tank Impact and Influence

Introduction 

In 2018, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives joined together in passing the Better Utilization of Investment Leading to Development (BUILD) Act, which led to the creation of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (USDFC)—a new U.S. development agency that succeeded the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). At the time, many global development experts heralded the new DFC as a huge step towards not only helping developing countries prosper, but also advancing U.S. foreign policy and security interests abroad. In a highly polarized environment, it was also a rare and meaningful example of bipartisan collaboration. When introduced in the House, the bill had 44 cosponsors split almost evenly between both major political parties (24 Republicans and 20 Democrats). 

What most people do not know, however, is the painstaking work behind-the-scenes that led to the passing of the BUILD Act, spanning almost a decade and with the contributions of many stakeholders. Enter Todd Moss and Ben Leo, current and past fellows, respectively, from the Center for Global Development (CGD), a think tank in Washington D.C. In 2011, Moss and Leo drafted a white paper entitled “Development without New Money? A Proposal for a Consolidated U.S. Development Bank,” in which the two outlined historical criticisms of OPIC and highlighted the Obama Administration’s pledge to consolidate the federal government’s export promotion agencies. The paper proposed the creation of what Moss and Leo called a U.S. Development Bank, which was an early blueprint of what eventually became the USDFC. At the time, the Obama Administration’s efforts to consolidate became mired in interagency fighting, but over the next several years, CGD and its partners kept pushing for this policy proposal at the federal level, as summarized by Emily Huie in her chapter on the experience in a forthcoming book from CGD: 

• Starting in 2011, CGD partnered with the ONE Campaign to conduct a grassroots campaign in support of the eventual BUILD Act, resulting in 1,600 visits to Congressional district offices and 1,500 phone calls to Congress. 
• Starting in 2013, Moss and Leo participated in countless meetings with congressional staffers through connections from CGD board members and partnership networks.  
• Between 2013 and 2015, Moss and Leo published additional papers that provided more detailed blueprints and legislative arguments for a combined DFC, some written in partnership with the Brookings Institute and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).¹ 
• Between 2013 and 2017, Moss and Leo testified before Congress six times about the proposal for a new DFC to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Takeaways from this Effort

What can we take away from this extensive policy effort? Foremost, it was indeed extensive. From the time Moss and Leo first proposed a consolidated DFC to when the BUILD Act was finally passed, nearly seven and a half years had passed. Such a lengthy time horizon for policy impact is not atypical for think tanks. Secondly, Moss, Leo, and CGD did not operate in isolation. They partnered closely with Board member and the ONE Campaign to provide much-needed advocacy support, built influential relationships with key congressional staffers at the right time to capitalize on political momentum, and rallied other think tanks like CSIS and the Brookings Institution to the cause. In essence, policymaking of this scale and nature rarely happens through single-player activation. 

The example and factors above highlight the unique challenges that think tanks face in measuring impact and influence. Typically, the purpose of a think tank is to advance evidence-based policy, or to broker policy knowledge and incubate new ideas. These organizations focus their time on research and debate to generate ideas that tackle pressing problems ranging from economic inequality to climate change to global development.² The presumption, therefore, is that a successful think tank is one whose policy ideas are adopted by decisionmakers and put into action. However, the reality is rarely that simple. Policymaking is a complex process of setting agendas, passing proposals, and implementing solutions. It is a lengthy, unpredictable process with a consistently evolving set of stakeholders and Overton windows.  

In this paper, we delve into the historical context and trends affecting think tank impact, the tradeoffs that must be navigated in measuring impact, and our recommendations to reimagine impact measurement moving forward. Our recommendations are based off Camber Collective’s years of strategic support in this sector with organizations like the Center for Global Development, Urban Institute, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Freedom House, the Center for American Progress, as well as interviews with a range of think tanks, funders, and policymakers. 

Content and Trends

According to the 2020 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report, there are more than 11,175 think tanks in the world, defined broadly. These organizations operate in the “ideas industry,” a term coined by Daniel Drezner to describe a marketplace where academics, researchers, and political pundits attempt to “sell” their ideas to policymakers in the US and beyond.³ While all think tanks have some role in generating and communicating ideas, their actual placement in the policy, research, and governance ecosystems varies widely. Think tanks may fall anywhere across a variety of spectrums: research-driven vs advocacy-focused, single vs multi-issue, partisan vs non-partisan, global vs local. For example, some institutions describe themselves as “universities without students,” producing top-quality research that serves as the evidence-base for policy choices, while others emphasize advocacy using strong communications and messaging campaigns.⁴ Audience targets also vary, from elected politicians (e.g., members of Congress) to influential bureaucrats (e.g., USAID administrators) to global leaders (e.g., UN officers). Funding is another key differentiator, and think tanks can be fully autonomous and independent, quasi- or fully government funded, or associated with universities, corporations, and/or political parties.  

Regardless of their specific target audience or overall approach, think tanks play an important role in today’s world. They provide a critical bridge between policy ideas, research and practical implementation, and they  often operate as the rare actor that is able to broker what is desired and what is possible for policy change. Think tanks ability to continue to play this role, however, is growing increasingly complicated.  

Today, this diverse field faces evolving trends that pose challenges to their operating environment and raise the stakes for institutions to define and measure their impact. First, political polarization (especially in the US) has made it difficult for think tanks to be perceived as non-partisan (most think tanks operate as 501(c)(3) in the United States and must operate with independence to maintain tax status). Through interviews with key think tanks and funders, we heard that “it appears that policymakers only read reports… from think tanks with which they agree politically.”⁵ Secondly, the proliferation of organizations attempting to drive public discourse and influence policy has increased competition for funding and decisionmaker attention. This takes the form of an increasingly fractured set of competitors, as the lines between think tanks, media, investigative journalism, and consulting firms blur, and the rise of social and online media change how audiences digest information. In the words of one interviewee, “the policy landscape has shifted and interest in traditional think tank product is waning… unless you’re a policy wonk, you don’t sit and read anymore.”⁶ 

Think tank funders, traditionally a combination of philanthropies and high net worth individuals (HNWIs) as well as government agencies, have greater influence given the competition. This increases the expectations of strategic alignment and proof-of-impact, sometimes resulting in overly siloed or funder-driven research programs. Amid this polarized and competitive environment, concerns over think tank independence are on the rise. The New York Times published a series of investigations between 2014 and 2017 that highlight how the struggle for funding has led some funders and think tanks to be unduly influenced by corporate and foreign donors. For example, between 2007 and 2015, the Heritage Foundation received at least $5.8 million from a Korean weapons manufacturer whose autonomous weapons system was touted by Heritage experts.⁷ While many think tanks fully disclose donors, maintaining independence -both actual and perceived- is a priority and challenge throughout the sector. The problematic choices of a few has led some to distrust think tanks, or as one pointedly named Foreign Policy article Why Everyone Hates Think Tanks describes, “it is time we confront the truth that think tanks have a serious, and perhaps also a deserved, reputation problem.”⁸ Ultimately, it falls on both think tanks and funders to be aware of the pressures they apply on each other and to realize the undue influences that can sometimes can lead to poor decisions. Think tanks must do what they can to maintain transparency and independence, and funders, in parallel, must recognize the deep value of non-partisan research so they can resist the urge to apply unwarranted and sometimes harmful indirect influence. 

Measuring Impact and Influence

Given the environmental pressures and context in which think tanks operate, the impetus for measuring (and disclosing) impact and influence is really two-fold. Externally, being able to clearly articulate one’s activities and what effects they had on the world provides a level of transparency and accountability for think tanks to their funders, stakeholders, and society at large. Internally, creating a model for defining and measuring impact allows think tanks to be more strategic and thoughtful, resulting in better stewarding of resources. Unfortunately, doing so has been a persistent and well-documented challenge for think tanks. After all, what is the impact of an idea? 

The first challenge that many think tanks face in measuring impact and influence is related to attribution or how to connect the research, expertise, or convenings to tangible policymaking or changes in perception. Arthur C. Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute, touched upon this issue in the Harvard Business Review: “[Think tank] output is pretty straightforward: books, research articles, op-eds, media appearances, public events, and so on. These products effectively constitute our supply curve. But nobody contends that simply writing an op-ed, publishing a peer-reviewed paper, or booking a scholar on television automatically guarantees a change in how leaders think and act.”⁹ These outputs are proxy measures, and proxies by their nature have limitations. They tend to be snapshots of a confined time period, are subject to the volatility of current events, and do not always link directly to “impact.” Moreover, policymaking is just complex, as the passage of the BUILD Act demonstrated. It’s nearly impossible to measure the impact of any one output, action, or organization if the qualifier is solely defined as policy change. To start, think tanks need a logic model that clearly states how their activities and outputs connect to short-term and long-term outcomes, and ultimately, to the impacts they wish to foster. 

The second hurdle that think tanks face in measuring impact and influence revolves around infrastructure: building the capacity, technology, and processes necessary to track impact long-term. More often than not, funder reporting requirements dictate what datapoints teams track and measure, given limited capacity to dedicate towards overall impact measurement. Hence, organizations lack clarity or efficiency in evaluating impact, whether this be ad-hoc requests for impact data, divergent definitions of what “impact” actually means, or a dearth of senior leadership to propel the work forward. The level of think tank investment in self-evaluation varies from one group to another (sometimes from one internal team to another), but in general, teams struggle with either securing the funds to build meaningful capabilities or generating enough organization-wide buy-in to invest—or both. For think tanks that operate like academic institutions, a lack of “buy-in” can be a barrier to developing a culture of consistent evaluation. As one interviewee states, “There are fellows at [our think tank] who believe that their research and work are valuable in itself… that the process of measuring impact is inherently flawed, and therefore, a hard task to prioritize.”¹⁰ To address this, think tanks need to collaborate closely with their funders to not only make appropriate investments, but also collectively agree on what is most important to measure.  

Tensions and Tradeoffs

Given the issues and trends that think tanks face, there are various tradeoffs and tensions in tracking impact and influence. In our experience working with think tanks, some of the key questions and considerations are: 

1. How do you determine a research agenda?  Research agendas can be driven by policymaker demand, researcher experience, and/or funder interest. They can also be determined based on gaps in the field or an estimation of potential impact for a given project. With the proliferation of organizations, competition for both funding and public attention increases, making it difficult to decide how to choose an agenda. One interviewee reflected on this challenge, asking “If everyone is chasing after the same new shiny thing, what differentiates you? Sticking with what you do and doing it better may be more effective than doing twenty new things… You may also be stuck with things that were interesting ten years ago but may not be impactful today.”¹¹ 
   
   Building an agenda that ignores the current policy discourse is a road to irrelevance. At the same time, a research agenda too broad can also lead to pitfalls. Another individual we spoke to commented, “Most think tanks are thin on an issue-by-issue basis. There are real benefits in the long run of working on fewer issues and having larger teams.”¹² However, scholars typically have evolving interests and may wish to set a dynamic agenda that diverges from funder or even policymaker interest. Any of these approaches to determining a research agenda require tradeoffs, necessitating clarity about the choice and its consequences. 

2. What is the best way to navigate the funder landscape? Think tanks not affiliated with a university or another primary funding entity typically rely on a combination of private foundations, HNWIs, mixed-vehicle philanthropies, and U.S. government agencies for their operating capital—and for some think tanks, corporations and foreign governments as well. The need to deploy varied development strategies hampers think tanks’ abilities to make decisions without considering funding sources. They also must wrangle with complicated determinations around whether to pursue organization wide or program, issue, or project-specific funding. These decisions are difficult, yet essential, as one interviewee reflected, many “think tanks are all running after the same rich people. It makes [them] very hand to mouth.”¹³  Siloed, short-term funding may fuel programs, but it also engenders significant administrative burden and the potential for undue funder influence.
   
   As we heard, “If you’re selling your research there is always the question of objectivity. Is the buyer really going to pay for something that comes out against them?” Think tanks and philanthropy alike should focus on long-term, unrestricted, or flexible funding, but it runs counter to the current project-specific and short-term grantmaking strategies of many foundations. Further, if the funding framework were to change, success is not a given.  

3. Is success defined in terms of policy change or policy outcomes? Balancing the idea of impact as policy change (evidence-based policy suggestion is passed or implemented) versus impact as policy outcomes (the extent to which a given policy had the desired effect) creates tension. Funders may express interest in the actual outcomes–for example, does a given think tank’s research about education ultimately lead to better educational outcomes for a target population? Indeed, given the variability of policy outcomes and the difficulty of assigning any causal attribution between outcomes and a think tank’s work, defining success in terms of policy outcomes can be impossible. All the same, it is dangerous to ignore policy outcomes. Doing so risks disconnecting the work from the mission and neglecting all the ways in which lives are actually affected, especially already-marginalized communities. Think tanks and their funders should make conscious decisions about the tradeoffs in defining success and create a logic model that most thoroughly captures the impact being made. Funders must also recognize that changing the conversation, or the facts that constitute the basis of developing policy, can also be a form of policy impact independent of outcomes in a given population.  

Recommendations

Despite the challenges and tensions, measuring impact and influence is still of vital importance for think tanks, not only because of external accountability and internal alignment, but also to compel think tanks to evolve and meet grassroots demands. Coming out of a world-defining pandemic and a new era of intolerance for racial injustice, think tanks need to build the infrastructure necessary to consistently evaluate their work and become better stewards of influence for all stakeholders, particularly impacted communities. This is not possible without measuring impact and influence. The era of think tank research speaking for itself is over.  

As Emma Vadehra, senior fellow at The Century Foundation, states: “As the broader policy ecosystem adjusts to a post-2020 world, think tanks that aim to provide the intellectual backbone to policy movements—through research, data analysis, and evidence-based recommendation—need to change their approach as well.”¹⁴ In essence, the very measurement of think tank impact and influence needs to be reimagined, steering away from counting productivity outputs and obligatory funder reporting to meaningful evaluation and learning with a clearly defined theory of influence. Think tanks can achieve this through a series of strategic shifts: 

1. Moving from policy agenda to theories of influence (TOI). Before setting policy agendas, program teams need to first define a theory of impact or influence towards achieving their missions. The TOI should then be used to define what to do and not do in terms of research, policy, and advocacy. This includes a logic model that outlines how inputs (e.g., staff time, resources), activities (e.g., conduct a pilot study, host a public forum), and outputs (e.g., published journal article, congressional testimony) lead to outcomes (e.g., issue salience, policy approval) and ultimate impact goals. Another core component of a TOI is clarity around who the audience is and why–a TOI should be driven by who needs to be influenced and which communities are being impacted, as well as why they are important. TOIs also have value at both the organization and program level, as they provide a structured narrative to describe the what, how, and why of the work. It is a central framework for any organization that wants to better define and understand impact.  

2. Moving from “bean-counting” to impact narration. Many think tanks fixate on the easily quantifiable outputs of a TOI when all parts of the logic model from inputs to impact are important in telling the full narrative of impact. Instead of focusing on fluctuations in outputs or activities to articulate productivity or effectiveness, organizations should use narratives to humanize the data and capture the full arc of their impact. This can be in the form of short vignettes or full case studies, as long as the stories recognize the complexity of policy influence, the contributions of various stakeholders, the lengthy time horizons for impact, and the results on impacted communities. Sarah Lucas, formerly of the Hewlett Foundation, a major funder in the industry, echoes this: “My view is that moving beyond numbers — and talking instead about how they are positioned, what they decide to work on, and who they work with — can help think tanks overcome their angst about impact.”¹⁵ These vignettes can also be developed and shared during key moments on a long-term pathway to impact, as organizations do not need to wait until policy change to share their learning journeys. 

3. Moving from funder reporting to evaluation and learning. The best TOI or impact framework is meaningless unless the organization buys into impact measurement for internal growth. Too often, program teams and fellows feel obligated to report impact for funding purposes only, but tracking impact is as much for developing team strategy, tracking progress, and learning from past successes and failures. Building this infrastructure will require collaboration between think tanks and their funders, prioritizing investments in senior leadership, technology, and staff capacity to measure impact and influence. The end goal is a learning organization that can adapt to the challenging environment in which think tanks operate. Furthermore, if this learning can happen transparently, it creates an opportunity for the public to contribute to the growth of think tanks as policy “expertise” becomes more collective and communal. 

Conclusion

In 2021, as Todd Moss and Ben Leo reflected upon their years-long efforts to pass the BUILD Act, they landed upon some clear takeaways. For starters, building relationships with key congressional staffers, grassroots lobbying groups, and other stakeholders in the development community was vital. Moss and Leo’s experience in government, as well as CGD’s board relationships, contributed to such relationships. Furthermore, the initial policy proposal for a DFC had arguments that appealed to both Republicans and Democrats. Proponents could adjust the benefits depending on who the audience was, and that flexibility was powerful. While no one at CGD contends that Moss and Leo contributed solely to the BUILD Act, many in the development community do credit their leadership and persistence in seeing it through. Many also recognize that the fight is not over—in its second year of operation, the USDFC has yet to make large-scale investments in low and middle-income countries, and CGD scholars continue to shine a light on these challenges. On reflection, there is a clear narrative with through lines and learnings that CGD and the global development community can apply to future advocacy efforts. With a clear theory of change, the right infrastructure investments and partnerships, and long-term commitment, all think tanks can and should measure their impact to better themselves and the communities they seek to affect.   

---

Notes

¹ George Ingram, Dan Runde, Homi Kara, Ben Leo, “Strengthening U.S. Government Development Finance Institutions.” Brookings Institute, 2013. 

² John de Boer and Rohinton Medhora, “What Are Think Tanks Good For?” United Nations University Center for Policy Research, 2015. 

³ Daniel Drezner, “The Ideas Industry: How Pessimists, Partisans, and Plutocrats Are Transforming the Marketplace of Ideas,” Oxford University Press, 2017. 

⁴ Alek Chance, “Think Tanks in the United States: Activities, Agendas, and Influence,” ICAS, 2016. 

⁵ Camber Collective project interviews/survey 

⁶ Camber Collective project interviews/survey 

⁷ Eli Clifton and Ben Freeman, “Restoring Trust in the Think Tank Sector,” Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, 2021. 

⁸ Matthew Rojansky and Jeremy Shapiro, “Why Everyone Hates Think Tanks,” Foreign Policy Magazine, 2021. 

⁹ Arthur Brooks, “AEI’s President on Measuring the Impact of Ideas,” Harvard Business Review, 2018. 

¹⁰ Camber Collective project interviews 

¹¹ Camber Collective project interviews/survey 

¹² Camber Collective project interviews/survey 

¹³ Camber Collective project interviews/survey 

¹⁴ Emma Vadehra, “We Need to Reimagine the Modern Think Tank,” SSIR, 2021

¹⁵ Sarah Lucas, “6 ways think tanks can overcome angst about impact,” Hewlett Foundation, 2017. 

Thanks to Amanda Glassman and the Center for Global Development for their contributions to this article.

The post What’s the Value of an Idea? appeared first on Camber Collective.

One of Camber Collective’s values is nurturing talent. Over the years, we have developed, mentored, and supported dozens of alumni who have pursued meaningful careers across a wide range of social impact spheres. We are proud of these alumni, and this series highlights their incredible stories before, during, and after their time at Camber.

Q: What was it like growing-up for you?

I am the product of two individuals from very different parts of the world. My father is US born, from a multi-generational family of European descent and is part of the Silent Generation. My mother is a lovely Colombian woman who grew up on a coffee farm in the Andes Mountains and later immigrated to the US at age 19. They met and fell in love in Santa Cruz, California, and started a family when my brother was born in 1979.  Fast forward just another year, my father starts law school at the University of Oregon with a toddler and a pregnant young wife. I was actually born the night before his first term final!

When I was four, our family continued north and settled in the community of South Whidbey Island [in the Puget Sound]. The best way to describe rural Whidbey is a ‘small town, surrounded by water.’ I grew up on a 2-acre property, surrounded by tall pine trees, and a short bike ride down a hill to Useless Bay. We had chickens, ducks, turkeys, you name it. There are pros and cons to living in rural America, and I’ll say that ‘it’s a good place to be from.’  By sophomore year of high school, I had transferred to a high school in Seattle, or as we called it, ‘the mainland.’

It was not easy. I felt like a foreign exchange student from a cultural standpoint. The wealth disparity was staggering. There were kids I knew on Whidbey Island who lived in the woods in a trailer, without electricity or running water, and then I go to a place where students were coming from some of the wealthiest, most prominent families in the region. It was a big shock, fairly striking, and one of the more formative experiences of my life. Especially with my parents coming from such different backgrounds, it added another level of awareness to my understanding of how much complexity there is in the world.

Q: How did your upbringing affect your education or career choices?

After graduating from high school in 1999, I ended up moving to the other side of the country to attend Tufts University in Boston.  It was great living in the city for the first time in my life.  I studied languages (Spanish and Italian) and majored in Economics. I spent an entire academic year abroad Spain as a real foreign exchange student, but funny enough, I actually felt like I fit in fairly well. I have Spanish heritage and looked like a local in many ways, and because I grew up bilingual, I was able to blend more than other American students. It was a weird sense of feeling like I belonged while also knowing I was a foreigner.

After moving back to the U.S, I spent winter break of senior year back home in the Seattle region. During my time off, I found myself inspired to start a small business and to run it on campus. Because my mother is a professional seamstress, I’ve been making clothes my entire life—it was a fairly obvious choice to make and sell clothes created in my dorm room. My first retail event was a “pop-up sale” at the Tufts Campus Center, and it went really well—I actually sold out a small collection of 80 pieces! I decided, hey, maybe there is something here. I ended up running and growing this small wholesale and direct retail fashion business for several years—I named it “Osorio,” the maiden name of my maternal grandmother. That early entrepreneurial experience, combined with good grades in college and a solid GMAT score, helped me get into business school a little bit earlier than I otherwise would have.

I’m proud of my family and how far we have come collectively in just a few generations.  My grandmother from Colombia (Abuelita Bernarda) only received a third-grade education. My mom graduated from high school and went on to take college courses, but did not end up graduating, in part because she married young and started a family in her early 20s. Within just three generations, I not only graduated from high school and then college, but then also went on to complete my MBA, which is an experience that many immigrant families share.

Q: What were your goals in business school?

I was 24 when I started business school, and most of [my classmates] were between 5 to 10 years older. This was a wonderful experience to have friends and fellow students who I could really look up to and mentor me, but it also meant I was in yet another situation where I felt like a foreign exchange student. While I had developed my small business to the point of working with a local factory, things were still quite modest, and I worked alone—it was all still very much a “scrappy” operation. I really did not have a good sense of how the corporate business world worked nor what my place in it might look like. I learned as much from my peers as I could and interned at Starbucks corporate over the summer to learn about this unfamiliar environment. While I was doing my internship, I met a wonderfully supportive executive who offered, “You should come work for me.” It was a very fortunate opportunity and I ended up working 3 days a week at Starbucks while also finishing my second year. It was atypical, but I felt [a need] to play catch up. I ended up enjoying a nearly 7-year career at Starbucks across many different roles, and three different large departments.

Q: Why did you decide to join Camber Collective?

After many years at Starbucks, I wanted to try something different. I wanted to get on the strategy team, but I made it to the final round of several interviews, but in the end, they always went with somebody who came from McKinsey, Bain, or BCG. A senior leader on that team pulled me aside one day and shared “You know, we really think you’re great, and we want to keep interviewing you, but I got to tell you—you don’t have the ‘right’ consulting experience.” The next day, I refreshed my resume and started talking to different local consulting firms that focused on strategic client work. I knew I had hit this kind of internal ‘dead end street.’ During my research, I took the advice of a high school friend who had left Deloitte to join a startup called Switchpoint (Camber Collective at the time).

I just really enjoyed everyone I spoke with. I really liked the people. With the other firms I was interested in, yes, everyone is smart, but there was something about the team at SwitchPoint that was so appealing. They didn’t make me feel like a foreign exchange student. Haha. They were growing and hungry, and at that point in my life I was like, “Yes, this is where I want to be.” The feeling was mutual, and I was brought on as employee number 13.

Q: Is there a Camber project that stands out to you?

I had the pleasure of working on a project with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s on—drum roll, please—male contraception! Long time ago, there was a race to create hormonal birth control for both sexes. They landed the female contraceptive technology sooner than male options, but not by much. When human drug trials began, it turned out that women were less likely to complain about side effects than men were.  This in turn led to the perception that female hormonal medications had fewer side effects. That in part is how the birth control pill for women became commercialized and the gender-based medical intervention that we know today.

There is a whole history of gender norms and sexuality tied to this medical technology path dependence, and it was a fascinating project to be a part of. If you ask anyone [at the Foundation] today what the single most effective contraceptive technology is, they will tell you the same answer: female education starting in early childhood and that extends throughout a lifetime. I’m proud to say that the engagement work we did for the Foundation had important impacts on the foundation’s family planning and gender equity work that continues even today.

Q: After 5 years at Camber, why did you decide to start Banister Advisors?

Banister Advisors offers client services that help ease the complex emotional and logistical burdens that individuals and families confront in the face of critical circumstances across their lifespan, including health crisis management, complex eldercare situations, end-of-life circumstances and bereavement after a major loss.

How do we decide what our occupation will be and what we’re called upon to do? I went through a very rough decade in my 30s. My first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. After I became pregnant again with my oldest child, he ended up being born prematurely with a range of health concerns that led to my first experience with a multi-month quarantine in 2013. When I was pregnant with my second child in 2015/16, they found a birth defect in utero at the 20-week ultrasound. After he was born, he needed surgery as an infant to, in the doctor’s words, “salvage his left kidney.” Like many people, I experienced serious bouts of postpartum mood disorder after both pregnancies, which included symptoms of anxiety, OCD, and even cognitive impairment. After my second child was born, my beloved father-in-law was diagnosed with a rare form of bile duct cancer. It was fairly advanced by the time it was diagnosed, and 18 months later (just three weeks after my second son’s major surgery), their grandfather died due to complications of his cancer.  He was only 65 years old and the kind of person who preferred to put the needs of his family, friends, and community ahead of his own.  

It became very apparent that as much as I appreciated working in a mission-oriented organization like Camber, the distance between strategy work and the lives I wanted to impact was just too wide of a gap for me to contend with. As I learned more about the world of grief and bereavement and how people navigate the types of personal suffering we face as human beings, the more I felt called to do something to alleviate the pain, even if I was not sure what that might even entail. As any good consultant would, I turned to my skills built in service of our social impact clients and started developing a landscape analysis. Consultants work with organizations to strategically identify and solve their problems, respond to their crises, and make difficult decisions. Why couldn’t we use similar approaches, tools, and frameworks in our own personal lives? I couldn’t get this idea out of my head. Why wasn’t personal strategic consulting and solution implementation a thing?

That is why I started Banister Advisors. “Banister” is my father-in-law’s middle name (Jay Banister Laughlin), and our organization an homage to him and the way he lived his life in service to others. Our team has been growing steadily since the company was founded in July of 2018. We are just now getting to a point where I’m not playing all the roles anymore. Instead of running around and ‘playing all the instruments,’ I feel more like the conductor of a very talented orchestra. It’s a new and sometimes quite uncomfortable role for me. We’re creating efficiencies and trying to put people in the best place for everyone to succeed. I say to my team all the time, “Well, at my old consulting firm, we used to…” so the skills and wisdom from my time at Camber continue to be an enormous source of guidance and support to me and my team. We’re a client services business at our core, and at the end of the day, we’re helping our clients navigate some of the most difficult dilemmas and circumstance they will ever face.

Q: What are you most proud of?

I’m really proud of my family, my kids, and my company.  For Banister specifically, where we are right now three and a half years in is not something that has just happened easily. The pandemic has been tough on everyone, including early-stage businesses—in September 2021 we became a majority ‘pandemic business,’ with more than half our existence now having occurred during the Covid-19 era. We are now a core team of 16 people. Our number one investor is our own revenue. You know, it’s never going to be perfect. There are going to be [hardships] and successes, so many ups and downs, but I’m just enjoying the ride. I’m proud to be a service business that can be distilled down to a one-word mission: Help. One thing in common from both my father’s and mother’s Catholic working-class and farming cultures is not talking about yourself. You do not boast.  But sharing about the work at Banister is a very clean source of pride for me, because I’m proud of ‘us’ not ‘me.’

The post Camber Alum Interview: Vanessa Laughlin appeared first on Camber Collective.

Economic mobility goes to the heart of the founding ideals of the US – a country that has long portrayed itself as a bastion of economic opportunity. As the accuracy of that narrative comes under collective scrutiny, efforts to advance economic mobility in the US have grown.

Initially drawn to the general attractiveness of economic mobility as a social impact issue, many of the stakeholders in this space have been compelled to take action on economic mobility in the face of three longstanding trends: persistently high poverty rates, new evidence of declining economic mobility, and unsustainable levels of wealth concentration. Each of these trends currently limits the prospects of lower- and middle-income individuals and communities ascending the economic ladder. Each trend also allows for a range of stakeholders to engage, by addressing the trends that are most relevant to their unique strategies.

Economic Mobility has become a prominent social issue

From our vantage point as strategic advisors for Shared Prosperity, it is clear that economic mobility has gradually become a more widely stated objective of philanthropic, governmental, and private sector stakeholders in the US, over recent years. The newfound prominence of economic mobility is apparent in the:

• Breakthrough research and analyses emanating from major US universities
• Recommendations and policy initiatives of political leaders, think tanks, and governments at the local, state, and federal levels
• Corporate social responsibility programs of a number of leading US corporations and employers
• Theories of impact of several of the country’s most influential philanthropies, community development finance institutions, and nonprofits.

A small snapshot of just some of the eminent institutions engaged in this area is captured below, purely as a means of illustrating the diversity of organization types involved:

The broad appeal of economic mobility as a focus of social impact efforts is three-pronged:

• First, economic mobility can serve as an overarching connector of various issue areas for those who seek to evolve beyond rigidly siloed social impact funding. For example: while criminal justice reform and employment have often been addressed as distinct issues, framing desirable social outcomes in terms of economic mobility (rather than purely in terms of criminal justice outcomes vs. employment outcomes) has allowed stakeholders to better explore the interrelationship between these two areas, and address both symbiotically. This, in turn, is conducive to more fluid and holistic funding approaches that move beyond traditional, single-issue funding towards innovative, multi-issue funds – such as the  Justice and Mobility Fund and the Families and Workers Fund.

• Second, economic mobility is a powerfully non-partisan issue: while political ideology and social agendas do skew beliefs around what might drive economic mobility (and can also influence which of the four measures of economic mobility stakeholders favor), there is broad consensus that economic mobility should be available to all in the US. For this reason, both sides of the political aisle are interested in the growing body of learnings around economic mobility in this country, the most widely covered of which are the work of Opportunity Insights and the Opportunity Atlas of economic mobility across US neighborhoods. This, in turn, can even be conducive to bipartisan policy agendas on economic mobility – California’s nonpartisan Economic Mobility Collaborative is one case-in-point.

• Third, economic mobility is central to the story of the United States: the notion that prosperity is attainable to all those who work diligently in its pursuit is a founding premise of this country. Generations of US-born citizens and immigrants, alike, have been fueled by a mantra that their labor and endeavor should ultimately pay unique dividends for them in the US – allegedly, in the form of greater wealth than may be attainable in other countries and societal recognition of their contributions. Nowhere is this ideal better captured than in James Truslow Adams’ Epic of America (1931), in which he evoked:

“A land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.   (It is not) “… a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

However, these three factors alone do not fully explain the upswing in explicit focus on economic mobility outcomes in the US. They do provide a uniquely strong enabling environment for interest in economic mobility, which is conducive to innovation and collaboration, but they are not the primary drivers of our clients’ engagement in economic mobility. Rather, organizations engaged in increasing economic mobility cite a series of persistent and dissatisfactory economic trends of significant concern to stakeholders of (almost) all ideological persuasions, which intersect to tell a bleak story of economic mobility in the US today.

Economic mobility is undermined by diverse factors that attract a broad spectrum of stakeholders

Multiple analyses over the last decade have evidenced the gradual evisceration of the ‘American Dream’, and with it, the collapse of a core pillar of the social contract and founding narrative of the US. The false narrative of the modern-day US as a place of unbridled opportunity and meritocracy for all people has been laid bare. Its fallacy constrains multiple segments of the population that have long been disempowered economically, perpetuating longstanding inequities for these population segments in the process. It also impedes the country’s so-called ‘middle’ class: a large, and increasingly disenfranchised, constituency that has essentially evaporated over recent decades.

Stakeholders seeking to revive economic mobility are usually responding to one or more of three headline challenges surfaced by recent analyses, all of which impact economic mobility in the US:

1. US poverty rates remain stubbornly high

The US still has the second-highest poverty rate of all OECD countries. The most conservative estimates of poverty, published by the US Census Bureau, have placed the poverty rate at 10-15% each year since the 1990s. These rates are based on a draconian definition of poverty – an income of less than $12,880 in annual income for a single person and $21,960 for a 3-person family. A commonly used alternative measure, which captures all people living on less than 200% of the Census Bureau’s thresholds and provides a more realistic measure of total poverty, shows that a massive 27.5% of the population is experiencing poverty. This rate has remained relatively flat in the last two decades, while conversely, rates of (extreme) poverty globally have fallen dramatically in the same time period. Perhaps the most striking statistic comes from the Federal Reserve: 37% of adults in America would be unable to cover a $400 emergency expense.

High poverty rates impede economic security and stability, which are pre-requisites to economic mobility. Without economic security and stability day-to-day, individuals cannot plan for a brighter future and are deprived of the power and agency on which economic mobility depends (per the findings of the US Partnership on Mobility from Poverty). The practical impact of poverty includes daily economic hardship, reduced social cohesion, and extreme cost to government over the lifetime of an individual. In focusing on poverty alleviation, stakeholders are also engaged, by extension, in advancing economic mobility.

2. US economic mobility is comparatively low, and in sustained decline

While cross-country comparisons of economic mobility depend on data and methodologies that are not always fully aligned in scope and approach, a string of economic studies suggest that the US stands out as having less, not more, intergenerational mobility than a large number of other OECD countries, on both absolute and relative intergenerational measures. (We have previously discussed the varying measures of economic mobility and their relevance. These may be useful to revisit before delving into the commentary below).

On one common research measure (absolute, inter-generational mobility), economic mobility in the US has collapsed over recent decades. The Opportunity Insights research and policy lab has produced the most comprehensive data analysis of US economic mobility to-date. Whereas ~90% of those born in 1940 went on to earn a greater household income than their parents (adjusting for inflation), only ~50% of young adults today can expect to go on to do so. On this measure, economic mobility has fallen across most of the income distribution, with the largest declines for middle class households.

These findings do not change even when using alternative price indices to adjust for inflation; accounting for taxes/transfers; comparing income at later ages in life; or adjusting for changing averages in household size as a result of evolving social norms.

At first glance, the headline takeaway from a relative, inter-generational measure of economic mobility can seem less alarming. On average, this measure of mobility has remained relatively flat since the 1970s: in general, individuals entering the labor market today are likely to end up in the same income quintile as their parents (at an equivalent age and adjusting for inflation). 

However, when combined with the insights we have on absolute, inter-generational mobility (presented above), the reasons for the apparent steadiness in relative measures of economic mobility becomes clearer: although fewer and fewer individuals are now matching their parents’ income level – which we might logically assume would lead them to fall into lower income quintiles – this decline is so widespread across those in the middle income quintile and lower income quintiles, that individuals are not ‘swapping places’ relative to one another. All are sinking together. By extension, most are therefore maintaining a steady position in the income distribution relative to others.

While the full reasons for this are multifaceted, a summary explanation may be that the fruits of the prosperity (i.e. the economic growth) generated by the US since the 1940s have not been shared as evenly over recent decades as they once were. Many point to policy choices that took root in the 1970s, and then multiplied across successive Democrat and Republican administrations, as one probable cause – which ties neatly into the next point below.

3. Prosperity has grown untenably concentrated

As the latest income and wealth inequality data attests: the (mean) average wealth of families in the US is no higher now than it was two decades ago. This is not promising, in and of itself, nor is it indicative of a truly open economy based on equality of economic opportunity.

More worryingly, perhaps, the wealth divide between upper-income families and middle- and lower-income families is acute and has grown continually since the 1980s. Upper-income families are the only category that grew their wealth from 2001 to 2016, by an average of 33%. In contrast, the wealth of middle-income families contracted by an average of 20% over the same period, and lower-income families have seen their wealth implode by an average of 45%. As a result, upper-income families now hold around 7 times the wealth of middle-income families and 75 times the wealth of lower-income families. These ratios are respectively double and triple what they were in 1983.

With such concentration of prosperity comes concentration of power. The ongoing rise in inequality appears to have caused economic opportunity and mobility to continue to diminish, per what is known as The Great Gatsby Curve. Growing inequality has also been shown to subdue the political influence of the economically disadvantaged (while affording the most wealthy direct influence on policy and lawmaking), support deepening geographic segregation of households according to income, and potentially stifle the economic growth on which future prosperity depends.

The confluence of these issues allows for a cross-section of stakeholders to engage

In short, there are therefore many factors spurring the resurgence in interest in economic mobility from stakeholders in all sectors. The general attractiveness of economic mobility is that it provides a useful frame for making non-siloed social impact investments; transcends political divides as a subject of concern; and resonates as a key objective for all those living in the US, thanks to its relevance to the founding story of this country. These are the “carrots” that make it especially appealing for stakeholders to track economic mobility.

The “sticks” that have ultimately compelled stakeholders to take action are: the stubborn poverty rate; declining economic mobility that cannot be concealed simply by picking a more convenient measure of mobility; and unsustainable levels of wealth concentration – all of which contribute to the crisis in economic mobility in the US at present.

The diversity of contributing issues allows for a diversity of stakeholders to engage. Those focused on economic insecurity and instability typically cite poverty rates as their chief concern; those focused on economic opportunity writ large are often responding to the economic mobility data; while those who seek to evolve our economic paradigms, including the economic dignity and sense of belonging of lower-income constituencies, will often be most concerned with the data on wealth inequality. All are ultimately contributing to efforts to increase economic mobility, albeit through different entry points into the issue.

In our next article, we’ll look at how to make sense of the economic mobility space in the US in terms of its three (primary) constituent fields, before exploring opportunities to strengthen each of these fields in the years ahead. Read our previous article here.

Other articles in this series:

Which Measure Of Economic Mobility Is Right For Your Organization?

How To Make Sense of the US Economic Mobility Space

The post Why is Interest in Economic Mobility Growing in the U.S.? appeared first on Camber Collective.