Phil Olaleye · Executive Director, Next Gen | As a Georgia State Representative and Executive Director of Next Gen, Phil is closing the opportunity gap for Atlanta high school students.

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When it comes to programming, some nonprofits choose a lane a mile wide and an inch deep while others dive a mile deep and an inch wide. The key is to know which lane your nonprofit thrives in.

Today’s guest is Phil Olaleye, Georgia State Representative and Executive Director of Next Gen, a nonprofit closing the opportunity gap for Atlanta high school students. Next Gen is expanding imminently, scaling its impact 10x, 100x, and hopefully more, and it’s doing it by staying in the lane it’s identified as the best fit for its mission, resources, and clients.

But identifying your lane is more than just seeing the existing structure; it involves using what’s missing to lay your path. Listen in for insights into the power of following up, expanding your village, and how to use scale to get to scalable.

Until you get on the ground and actually test your assumption by talking to the people you're serving and the people helping you do the serving, you're not going to know. And so for us, so it's not a proprietary model where you can just look at a bottom line and increase in customers, increase in profit. For us, it's simply looking at engagement and looking at participation and talking to our students. What do you enjoy most about this program? Talking to our stakeholders, our parents and guardians of our students, talking to, the local companies and partners who host our students for these exposure trips on a monthly basis.

When it comes to programming, some nonprofits choose a lane a mile wide and an inch deep while others dive a mile deep and an inch wide. The key is to know which lane your nonprofit thrives in.

Today’s guest is Phil Olaleye, Georgia State Representative and Executive Director of Next Generation Men & Women, a nonprofit closing the opportunity gap for Atlanta high school students. Next Gen is expanding imminently, scaling their impact 10x, 100x—hopefully more—and they’re doing it by staying in the lane they’ve identified as the best fit for their mission, resources, and clients.

But identifying your lane is more than just seeing the existing structure; it involves using what’s missing to lay your path. Listen in for insights into the power of following up, expanding your village, and how to use scale to get to scalable.

Justin Wheeler Phil, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?

Phil Olaleye Doing well, doing well. How are you, Justin?

Justin Wheeler I'm doing well myself. I'm excited for today's conversation. For the listeners, excited to introduce. You're a man that wears many hats. I'm an executive director of an amazing nonprofit. But also a state rep in Atlanta, Georgia. In Georgia, which is, I'm sure, interesting, especially more so as we lead up to, these elections. But if you wouldn't mind, just take a moment just to tell us a little about your about yourself, your story and more about your nonprofit and what you're up to.

Phil Olaleye Yeah. Well, first off, it's it's great seeing you again, Justin. It's been a minute since, Camp Redwood, but still allow. Yeah. I grew up in Georgia and in Stone mountain and spent time outside of Georgia. Studied public policy. I've always been interested in solving problems tied to people in communities, and naturally went off and joined the Peace Corps and was out in the Philippines for, three years, working underneath the bridge wearing jorts and, you know, foot flaps, taught. But I loved it. You know, I just really, discovered and honed in on this, passion for, community work, but also helping improve organizations and just their systems and practices to deepen their impact and to just do more good work. And so when I got back from the Philippines, I went back to school and went to Harvard, got a, master in public policy, moved back to Atlanta, 2014, where I've been ever since, work for the City of Atlanta Sports Workforce Development Agency and helping to better deliver, again, a critical public service to Atlantans. And I've been with next gen since, fall of 2017. I'm coming up on seven years and feeling like an old man over here, but, it's been phenomenal. Our work has always been rooted in workforce development, more specifically to underserved high school youth and helping provide college and career exposure. So in person, immersive experiences in at work sites and on college campuses, as well as providing personalized professional support to help those young men and women realize their full potential after high school. And we're just big believers that if every young person can see it and experience it, they can become it.

Justin Wheeler Really well said and curious how you think about sort of the relationship between your work. As an executive director at Next Gen and your work in the city of Atlanta as, as a wrap, how do these two things intertwine, if at all? And we have to be curious to kind of hear about that, that sort of relationship and how you view that.

Phil Olaleye I mean, every, every nonprofit is trying to solve for a big issue, right? And in our case, it's just, the opportunity gap and more specifically the, wealth and, economic security gap between high school students who have access to, to people, human capital resources, gatekeepers to internships and employment opportunities and information to know what's out there beyond the walls of a classroom and to get excited about their future and have, most importantly, the support in place to navigate, those next steps in the real world versus, youth who don't really have no fault of their own, just being held back by their own personal and family circumstances. And so that's what we're trying to solve for in, in the world of, of politics and public policy, it's no different. There are big, just intractable issues. It could be, workforce development and, it could be education and, and, and and just bettering the educational experiences and outcomes that, our future, are having could be infrastructure, it could be health care and just increasing access to care and support. Everything starts with an issue. And most, issues and problems are solved by people and driven by people. And so my ability to be on the ground every single day, speaking with and learning from educators and families and just everyday folks helps my ability as a legislator roll a lot of those ideas and concerns and aspirations and hopes into public policy programs and initiatives that can just make their lives better. And so I'm lucky. I'm just lucky and fortunate to be in this position, to have my, my hands on, so much rich data and just, access to people who help me become a better problem solver and by default, better legislator.

Justin Wheeler Yeah, it's it brings a whole new meaning to, you know, for the people when you're when you're in the weeds and you're on the ground level understanding what the problems are, seeing the problems for yourself, you know, it's it's you making that connection as a legislator. It's very powerful. Element to be able to have, because I feel like so many legislators are so far removed from maybe some of the problems that they are trying to solve. And so the work that you're doing with NextGen gives you an interesting platform to to be able to be a more relevant legislator than maybe we're used to. And so that's, that's a that's really interesting to to hear you share some of that something you talked about identifying big problems and you're addressing, you know, some, some big problems in, in your own community when you think and, and something else we've heard you say is, is the importance of like picking your lane and sticking in your lane. How do you do that when when you're looking at a big problem that could require a multifaceted approach to solving it? Just walk us through sort of your approach in like sticking to your lane, and and how you, how you do.

Phil Olaleye So it's hard just and it's because it's, it's all interconnected. Right? It's it's not just housing, it's food insecurity. It's not just food insecurity. It's mental health and and wellness. It's it's not just mental health and wellness. It's, access to care here in Georgia, where we're one of few states who have yet to, sign on to the Affordable Care Act and, literally overnight, provide access or give access to half a million children, youth and families in our state. And so, they all work together to create these big issues and challenges facing families, facing schools, educators, in our case, youth. But it's important to define what you do well so that you're able to do it well. I don't think that you can be everything to everyone. It's the old adage. Or do you want to go a mile wide and, an inch deep, or do you want to go a mile deep and an inch wide? And so we're definitely in the business of being focused on our unique value to our youth, our educators, our families, our communities. It very much is in this space of exposure and exposure to, careers, exposure to colleges, exposure to professional experiences that, provide young people with an idea of what's out there, what's for me, and building, what we know to be so much more powerful and determinative in any one person's success. It's just the people you know, right? And the people who are willing to invest in you and open doors and unlock opportunities that otherwise would remain shut. And so and we simply do that by just by creating these local ecosystems and communities of people who care and give a damn and when to do something about it. But it's easy. It's so easy and light and turnkey and, I'm happy to, to to go deeper into our concept of an exposure trap and why these traps and that exposure and the people who host our students on site and our resources for our students is the lifeblood of our organization. Success.

Justin Wheeler Very cool. Yeah, I do want to I want to come back to that. I want to have a follow up question around something you said and which correlates to this, this concept of sticking in your lane. And it's it's, you know, it's identifying the thing that you do well and going deep into it to your, your point, you know, not not like a mile long, but really the mile deep. Yeah. For organizations that are listening, you know, who have, you know, a menu of different sort of programs and, and, and outcomes, from, from those programs. How do you identify and, and maybe you could share specifically from your lens and how you've done this with next gen is how do you identify the thing that you're really good at as an organization, especially if you're doing multiple things? You know, what is sort of the evidence or the proof that you found that, this is the thing we've really got to double click on. I mean.

Phil Olaleye You've got, you can form an assumption and, and think that, you know what, Justin were great at X. And until you get on the ground and actually test your assumption by talking to the people you're serving and the people helping you do the serving, you're not going to know. And so for us, so it's not a proprietary model where you can just look at a bottom line and increase in customers, increase in profit. For us, it's simply looking at engagement and looking at participation and talking to our students. What do you enjoy most about this program? Talking to our stakeholders, our parents and guardians of our students, talking to, the local companies and partners who host our students for these exposure trips on a monthly basis, speaking to our donors and and hearing from them. Why do you give, why do you take the time to pull that plastic out of your pocket and punch in those numbers to support next gen? And time and time again, it's exposure. It's this simple idea of helping create a bridge between a young. Person and a not so young person. I don't want to call you not old people just yet. Just. And but, you know...

Justin Wheeler I'm not ready to be called old. But I'm getting there. 

Phil Olaleye But, you know, a bit seasoned and, you know, we've run a few laps around the block, but, we've acquired some knowledge and expertise and some social capital. And so not only provide the exposure, but the soft mentorship, the relevant mentorship where a young person, in our case, our students, starting in the ninth grade, they're going on a monthly trip. They're literally leaving their school, their community, and exploring their home, exploring, in this case, Atlanta and next fall, Macon, Georgia, those workplaces, the people who work within those walls, learning about their job functions and the paths that they took to get there and then leaving with something. Right. Maybe they don't want to go in that field and they know that, but maybe they do. And they've met Justin, who runs this phenomenal organization. And for whatever reason, they want to explore that idea further and were able to tap into and pull from. We call it a village. Just again, it takes a village to raise a child. And so we're literally creating this physical and spiritual village here in Atlanta, to help those students connect those dots, to form, a goal or a target that gets them excited about their future, but most importantly, provide some relevant, personalized support in the form of SAP mentorship well beyond high school as they go off to college and, you know, sooner than later, enter the workforce. And we all need help kind of navigating those steps.

Justin Wheeler Yeah. So literally it is back to your first point is in the most literal sense possible is if you can see it, you can be it. And initially when you're talking about these exposure trips, I was thinking it was, you know, like funders or, you know, that's the typical sort of model that you see is like a fundraising mechanism. But what I love is what you it's, it's the, it's the reverse is you're taking students to various workplaces and environments and communities to help them understand what their potential is and can and can be. Yeah. What an inspiring program. What was the original inspiration behind that for whether it was your vision or next gen, the organization? Yeah. What was the what was the initial inspiration behind that model?

Phil Olaleye Yeah, it was founded by three educators. So I'm not the, the, the founder. Although, you know, I've been here almost twice as many years as, as our founders, but, founded in 2014 by, high school educators who saw this need, at the time, we were just next generation men with a focus exclusively on serving, predominantly black and brown high school youth who had no clue about workforce career, college options. What life could look like beyond high school. And we're on the receiving end of, pretty dry and boring career affairs with no guide to make sense of just all of the chaos and activity that they were B that was being thrown their way, but also a lot of scared straight tactics. And I don't know why we do this in our underserved communities, but bringing people in who might have, made a few bad choices and, don't be this person. Instead of leading from a more positive tact of no, we're actually going to show you where you could one day call your work home and who you could one day become. And so those educators simply just leaned on their friends, their personal network, to say, hey, you know, we went to Emory University, let's organize a college tour because they've never visited a college. Hey, I've got a friend who, works for a smaller software development shop. I've got a friend who works for a law firm. I've got a friend who works for a construction management company. And simply using exposure as a vehicle to help stretch the imaginations and just increase the confidence level of young men at the time. And now young women who. I mean, if your parents never went to college or are in a in and out of jobs, and it's kind of hard as a young person to be on the receiving end of go to college, what does what the hell does that even look like? You know, to a 14, 15 year old who has never been there, seen it, or knows anyone close to them in their circle who's done it. And so, we're we're creating a sense of possibility by just calling on friends and calling on neighbors and calling on people. In Atlanta, we now have upwards of 70 local companies, to your technical and four year, universities, well, make up our village here in Atlanta, and it's replicable. It's simply, you know, asking a professional to stay put at their office. 2 to 3 additional hours, after five. And, you know, we bring a group of, curious and and talented and wide eyed students to your workplace. The first hour is it's very low key. It's touring the workplace and breaking the students and professionals up into small groups just to break the ice and get to know one another. Right. It all starts with a personal connection. And then that second hour is typically an occupational activity. Chase, a fun project that allows that young person to work again in that small group with that one or small group of professionals to just test their skills and sink their teeth in a very real issue, or a challenge or work product that a professional would be working on on any given day, and giving them an opportunity not only to do it, but then to break it down into discuss it and talk about it. And so that very real life immersion and those personal connections, they leave a mark on a young person's heart. They leave a mark on a young person's just imagination and sense of self to want to do it. And there's nothing more powerful for any person, but definitely for a young person, than having a goal or a vision for the future that that's exciting, that excites you. You're just excited to get up every single day and regardless of what life throws your way, it's something that you want so badly, and you want it so badly because you've been able to taste it and sample it and experience it.

Justin Wheeler Yeah, absolutely. 

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Justin Wheeler I'm curious to hear sort of like the follow up or follow through after one of these exposure trips. What what is, next gen doing, you know, to to build on that momentum so that experience isn't forgotten. You guys built any programing around that as part of, sort of the next step?

Phil Olaleye Yeah. Well, I would say, we have these quick like, debriefs. I mean, it literally is sent to their phones. They complete it in like, 60s. And we're just constantly collecting data on what did you like, what didn't you like? Are you interested? Do you want to go deeper within this field or industry or within this company? And so that information and insight is just powerful for us on the back end to make relevant connections. But I would give our board a ton of credit. We just wrapped up or we didn't just wrap up, but two years ago, we, kicked off our second ever strategic plan with a big focus on it's great to, to take these trips, and it's great to provide the after school support. So when our students are going on trips, they're meeting with teachers and college students who run and facilitate afterschool programing for about an hour, 1 to 2 times a week in between those monthly trips. But for our students, that doesn't. The trip alone is not going to solve for the problem. And the problem is economic security, i.e. a good job, right? A career and all that comes with that wealth building, creation, family sustaining wages and being able to pour back into your community, strengthening a community and strengthening the the role models and the resources and assets that are now accessible to the next generation. Right. It doesn't end without that. And so our board realized that we've got to do a better job, not just with the follow through after a trip or after they complete 3 or 4 years with our program. But what is happening to our students once they leave high school and are out on their own, you know, in college or, working a career, how are we still being present in making our ecosystem and our village a value add to their continued growth, development, and just the generation of opportunities to land great jobs within fields that they're passionate about.

Justin Wheeler Awesome. Very cool. It's a great follow up to that when you think about, you know, I mean, there's there's always, always talk especially I think, lately in the nonprofit sector about scaling impact, scaling growth. And when you put that through the lens of, of having a narrow focus, you know, or serving like, having a very niche sort of offering in terms of, the programs that they are offering, how does that correlate to scale? How do you and, and, or, you know, said another way, how do you, as the leader of next gen, think about scale, the importance of it? And how does that play into your decisioning across the organization?

Phil Olaleye That's such, great question. And it defines organizations that last and are able to continue to grow, in. Scale and those that can't. And so I frame it like this to my team every day. And we have visuals to reinforce this. If it can't be done and run easily and effectively to change the lives of tens of thousands of students. Then we probably shouldn't be hmhm. And for me, that's the the best way to ensure that our model, our delivery, our staffing, our operations, our systems are positioned to run at scale. And maybe they're not positioned just yet. We, you know, we'll serve, you know, close to 500 students and 250 alum this upcoming year. So we're we're pushing a thousand plus, in addition to hundreds of Atlanta professionals and hundreds of trips that we've facilitated. It's becoming a large and massive operation. But again, can we do it easily? Is it it's it's simple. Is it too much of a strain on staff. But looking ahead, you know, if we multiplied trips are students served ten x 100 x, would it still be easy and simple to run. And we're still figuring that out. I think it it's it's it's not something that you ever perfect. And just a few weeks ago we went through a few end of year exercises where we're still cutting and refining and tightening to this day, because as we keep that question in mind, is it scalable? Can we serve 10,000 plus students at ease, effectively doing it this way? If not, then we've got to pull it down or we've got to rethink how we go about the work. But if so, if we can answer that question and we might not be there yet, but we feel very confidently in answering that question of scale, serving 10,000 plus students. Then we're on to something, and we've just got to keep tightening and deepening and growing.

Justin Wheeler Yeah. No, that's that's really good. And, you know, I one of my favorite books on scaling. I don't know if you've read it, it's a book called, Bullet scaling. And, you know, there's it's like there's a it's mostly about like, software technology companies and, and like, basically takes you kind of on this journey, their journey of scale. And there was like a, there's a very common, characteristic trait that all of these companies that had hit hyperscale had, and that was in the, in the beginning and, and the beginning may not necessarily the beginning of the organization, but at the beginning of like a new iteration of a product or service, they had to do things that just weren't easy to scale, right, that were just really hard to scale and to to really deeply understand the problem. Right. And it's like and, and, and in order to sometimes like the reality is you're when you're thinking about how do we get to 10,000 students, for example, sometimes you're like, well, we're going to, we're going to do, we're going to have 100 really well and it's not going to be super scalable. It's going to probably cost way more than it will cost once we are able to get to 10,000. Yeah, but we're going to learn a lot along the way and we're going to find that way to to scale. And so I thought that was like so inspiring because sometimes we as leaders can think that scaling is a, a like a zero thing. That's it's either scalable or it's not. But to get to scale this, there's all these inefficiencies and there's all these like challenges that come up that make it so hard to scale. But then then you get the secret sauce or you, you just you find that moment or, you know, that thing that just really opens your mind up to the possibility, you.

Phil Olaleye Know, it, it it's just in like, you don't know what you don't know until you just fly around and try stuff. It's like, I love that frame of, you know, it's not supposed to be easy and it's not supposed to happen. And day 0 or 1, and it might take a few years, but we're going to sooner or later get our finger on the pulse of that thing. Right. That kernel of a thing that's, you know, can be supercharged into just transformative change and, and solution for, in our case, you know, people and in youth and families who haven't experienced, real positive change as it relates to, opportunities to have access to those people in those places. And so it's such a great concept, this, this level of you don't know what you don't know and you can't figure it out. And until you try and it's going to be messy and imperfect, but it's supposed to be, you can't get to the other side of your learning without that.

Justin Wheeler Without an exactly. It's that it reminds me of an article that I read, actually from a publication from your school, Harvard Business Review, concept called Zero Gravity Thinking. And it basically this idea that in order to solve really hard problems like you, you need both sort of like the matter experts, right. So in your case, like the educators and, who are the matter experts of the problem you're trying to solve. And then. You need people who have no idea about your matter. Matter expertise, right? Because they're going to be not conditioned to think of the constraints. They're not going to be conditioned to think of, like the limitations. They're going to know what the problem is, but not what all the roadblocks are going to be along the way. So they're going to think bigger, or they're going at least allow the conversation to go outside of the bounds of where it would normally go when addressing. And, you know, coming back to your point of, you don't know what you don't know, sometimes, like, that is such a powerful ingredient to accomplish. The thing that you're absolutely trying to accomplish is when you chase that curiosity and when you try to discover, the the unknown isolate, as cliche as that might sound.

Phil Olaleye It's and it's hard. And I will say I went to the, the better, school at Harvard, the Kennedy school, not the business school, the better.

Justin Wheeler Okay.

Phil Olaleye But.

Justin Wheeler I the better.

Phil Olaleye You know, what makes it hard is like, you give a damn, like you care. That's what makes it hard. And it makes it hard to just stay in your lane. Because it's so tempting to want to plug that young person. Who is he and his family are suffering from chronic homelessness with. You want to make the call or kind of ride around town and talk to this person and that person, but that's what partnerships are for. Right. Like next gen like we may not do that. And it it's part of the the larger solution. But if you're being pulled so far off your thing you can't do your thing really well. And what makes it hard is when you have these deep, deep like challenges and problems facing people in communities that, you know, across so many different sections and in, in, in areas of focus, and that you kind of think that you've got to do it all to solve the problem. But in effect, you work against and not in service of the thing you're trying to address. It just you just make it that much harder to be successful and effective at your work. And so it's hard for myself. It's hard for my team to just define, define and redefine some more. Like, this is our lane. We got to stay in our lane, and we cannot be greater successful if we're consistently stepping outside that lane. And it's a process to your point. You know, we're still defining and we're still refining, but, it just makes it hard because you care. You give a damn. Yeah. That that issue and that problem is so real in, in, in, in your face that it's just easy to get pulled astray.

Justin Wheeler Yeah. I think the difference is, you know, like when you, when you stay in your lane and again like, lanes can expand. Right. You've got one lane highways, you got two lane highways like, you know you're going to expand as, as you grow. But staying focused I think there's like there's two ways to kind of look at this is, is the, the lane setters or the lane offenders, if I can use that term, the lane offenders, like they're doing important work. Right. And, but they're probably more like Band-Aid to the to like Band-Aid solutions to the problems that are being addressed. They're not going to have a long term impact. They're gonna have a short term impact. And sometimes that's very much needed because it could be an emergency and this person needs a home, or this person needs food, and we have to solve that problem. The lane centers, I think, are the individuals who are like, they're just they're trying to ensure this problem doesn't exist in ten, 15, 20 years from now. And that is so hard because it takes discipline and you get distracted. But staying focused, I think is, is at the really the root of actually solving the problem that you're trying to solve. And sometimes that's that's just hard to keep in mind when we are a culture that takes pleasure in short term wins and, you know, short term successes, like most of the hard, challenging things in life, take a lot of time, a lot of discipline, and obviously a lot of focus.

Phil Olaleye And it depends on, you know, what you're trying to accomplish at, I don't, you know, I can't speak for anyone else, but are you really trying to solve for that problem, you know, permanently? Do you want to get rid of it, like just end it? Or are you okay with just the Band-Aid, Band-Aid? Band-Aid? And and in my line of work, everything serves a purpose, right? Like the backpack, like a thousand backpacks, right? Drives that. That serves a purpose. Like, you know, students need backpacks. They need materials. That's a today problem, right? Yeah. And everyone, again, they're they're just multiple lanes out there for folks to occupy. And I think it's really hard to expand your work if you can't perfect and define a lane for yourself that you can build on.

Justin Wheeler Absolutely. Fell. It has been an absolute pleasure catching up with you today on the podcast. I don't wanna take up too much of your time. I know you, are a busy individual, so we do appreciate the 30 minutes here that you've given us. I don't envy you. Over the next six months, you're going to have it's going to be a contentious, contentious time in politics.

Phil Olaleye And all the positivity and good vibes.

Justin Wheeler It's all coming. It's all coming to Georgia. It's all coming to Georgia. But at least now they've got you there and sending nothing but the the good vibes in and support your way. And again, just appreciate you being on the podcast today.

Phil Olaleye I receive that and I miss you brother. And this was fun. I appreciate the opportunity.

Justin Wheeler Absolutely. Thanks, Phil.

Phil Olaleye Thank you.

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