By Brad Googins

I can’t think of anyone in the corporate citizenship space more passionate than Karen Proctor from Scholastic. On Karen April 27, Karen kicked off the Boston College Center’s Business-Education Summit in New Orleans. All you have to do is spend a few minutes with Karen to see and feel a tangible energy that gives immediate definition of passion.

I have known Karen for more than a decade, in her former role at the National Basketball Association, more recently at Scholastic, and as a Center board member. But it was the Karen here in New Orleans that for me embodied the best of what an individual engaged in corporate citizenship can achieve, as she displayed a passion that was converted into action.

One of the unique aspects of this meeting was that it took place in New Orleans, a community that has faced the unthinkable and whose path forward is being invented and created in real time. As part of this experience, Karen led a group of about 15 of us to the A. P. Tureaud School, located in one of the many devastated neighborhoods trying to cope and recover since Katrina.

Scholastic has been heavily engaged with the schools of New Orleans, trying to use its assets and bring its care to build capacity in a school and a community bravely trying to climb back from disaster. By any measure we were seeing a highly traumatized community where 70 percent have lost their homes, facing an infrastructure that needs building from the ground up, and sitting with a range of social and economic issues that would drive most of us into deep depression: 15-year-olds in fourth grade, no physical education so kids have little time to be outdoors, and minimal parental involvement, in large part because parents live across the river trying to mend their lives back together. But on another level, if you spend a little time there you can immediately see the spirit of rebuilding and can-do. On walking into the school, you can’t help but be struck by the many symbols throughout the building. In the classroom I visited, boldly splayed across the top of the blackboard was “Storms Come, Love Remains, Hope Blossoms”; on another wall, “Enter to Learn, Depart to Serve.”

It is into this context that Karen and her team have thrown themselves to create a difference in reading and literacy – with amazing energy and, perhaps more importantly, results. Working with 32 schools and 95 classrooms, Scholastic is creating perceptible progress, student by student.

One of the highlights of my visit was meeting Karen’s father-in-law, a lifelong New Orleans resident who has been working as an educator in the city for over five decades. He also had been a student at the A. P. Tureaud School two generations earlier. A truly amazing difference maker, he led us to his house in the flooded area and, carefully removing the lock and chain which wrapped around the front door, led us into his gutted house, which he and his wife had to flee and which now remains a shell of its proud former self. I felt a profound sadness standing in the stripped-down shell, listening to Mr. Proctor’s joyful memories, and felt the loss of precious photographs and joyful family times.

Which brings me back to Karen, or “General,” as her father-in-law affectionately called her.  It fits: Karen has brought not only a passion to her work and to New Orleans, but a dogged determination, vision and voice that makes you want to get up and join her in her cause. She represents the best of those who labor daily to bring their corporations to communities, and contribute to solving those issues. So I salute “General” Proctor, and depart New Orleans even more inspired by the power of one.

Tags: Business-Education Summit, Karen Proctor, Katrina, New Orleans, Scholastic
This entry was posted by Brad Googins on Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 at 1:44 PM, and is filed under Center News & Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.