Welcome to The Q — an interview series where we invite the Equal Measure team, clients, and colleagues from the field to share their insights on evaluation, philanthropic services, emerging trends in the social sector, and more. In this interview, we spoke with Bilal Taylor, a Senior Consultant at Equal Measure. Bilal works on a diverse set of national and local evaluation projects, including evaluations of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Family Economic Security Workforce Development Pilots, the Irvine Foundation’s Linked Learning Regional Hubs, and Living Cities’ City Accelerator initiative.
So Bilal, much of your professional background is in education. Can you share how you became interested in that field?
It probably has a lot to do with my upbringing. I grew up on Long Island, and was a pretty impoverished kid. At the end of fifth grade, I was having some difficulties and getting bullied a bit. A music teacher of mine suggested that I take a PSAT exam for Friends Academy, a local Quaker school. I was accepted with a scholarship, and started there in sixth grade. Those last seven years, sixth to twelfth grade, really changed my life.
Initially going there, I just felt really scared. I was that super poor kid at the super elite school with rich kids. Yet I was able to hold my own. Being able to compete in that situation, and then to do pretty well, broke down any notion of inferiority I was carrying. When I was out of school myself, I began to think about what opportunities are missed for other young people who don’t necessarily believe in themselves — who just don’t have access.
Humble beginnings should not hinder anybody who aspires to be great. That really is my belief — that there are these gems all around us, and all young people have talent. We just have to help them be in an empowering environment. I feel like I have something to give to young people who are in some tough situations. That’s what drove me to this profession, and to the social sector in general.
What do you hope to give back?
To be an example hopefully. To just show young people there are many ways to be authentic. In the context I was growing up in, I think a lot of times authenticity meant you weren’t supposed to be smart. You weren’t supposed to learn. I hope to be able to give back a model for a different way to go.
I still keep in touch with a lot of young people from Mastery Charter School, where I was the Dean of Students. Those students are in their 20’s now. One of the great joys of my life is that they will mock little things I was doing when I was a Dean. Just the presence, the connection you get is empowering — because I feel that what you give young people is your time and your energy and being authentically you. You can be Albert Einstein trying to teach Physics, but if young people don’t feel that there’s a real connection, they can’t learn from and with you. For me, that connection begins with the thought that there are adults who care, which is why what you actually give of yourself in the youth development field can be so impactful.
How has your experience shaped the way you approach evaluation?
I’ve learned that it’s important for folks to try to solve problems for themselves, and to not impose solutions upon them. As a Dean of Students, I saw that people have their own code, their own way of being and understanding. So I think we should try to figure out how to work within that. I believe that you don’t have to use a top-down approach.
When I was a Dean, I felt like I was a detective, a social worker, and a counselor. And I had to teach a class. If I came in like ‘Sergeant Slaughter,’ it just wouldn’t have worked out. Rather than say, ‘This is my system of discipline,’ I had to go in and say, ‘What’s the way the folks understand and work together? How do we have shared ownership of that work?’ It’s really a shared process. Without that, you can’t move forward.
Can you tie any of those examples to some of the organizations you’ve worked with at Equal Measure?
Well, I think of the Philadelphia Youth Network’s effort as the backbone organization for the Project U-Turn collaborative. We were aiming to figure out the focus for the next phase of Project U-Turn, as it strategizes on how to continue to make a difference for underserved older youth in Philadelphia. Early on, we began a process of assessing whether the group wanted to focus on drop-out prevention, re-engagement, or increased postsecondary school and career options. However, initial surveys and interviews indicated that Project U-Turn stakeholders wanted to do all of those things. We then said, ‘Okay, how do we help our client flesh out a way to organize its next phase of work along all of these dimensions?’ So the work expanded from strictly evaluative to advisory. We had to listen for the emergent sense of where the collaborative saw itself heading. I feel that we worked collectively with PYN to reshape the project based on what we heard and learned.
Drawing from those experiences, both in evaluation and in education, what do you identify as some broader trends within the social sector?
I think one of the issues will be the question of community control of institutions. Power can be a term that gets a little squirrely for some folks, but really it is power that we’re talking about. Who can make a decision? Who owns it? I think as we see communities mobilizing themselves — we’ll have to respond to issues of community control and what that authentically means.
For me, thinking about K-16 work is going to be really important. A lot of my experience is in thinking about K-12, and how young people get ready for postsecondary education. But there is a huge gulf between getting into a school, and then persisting in that school, particularly after the first year. So whether our approach to increase postsecondary persistence is to think about a K-14 model, additional training, or readiness services, it’s important to consider those immediate pieces of an 18–20 year-old’s life that keeps them engaged in postsecondary education.
