Anna Kawar with Boys and Girls Club of America

Intro: [00:00:08] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Cherokee Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Sharon Cline: [00:00:23] Well, hello and welcome to the inaugural show. This is a new show called Fearless Formula on Cherokee Radio X. And this is where we talk about the ups and downs in the business world and offer words of wisdom for business success. And I am your host, Sharon Cline, and our guest in the studio currently serves as the Director of Implementation and Impact of Boys and Girls Clubs of America. And she has dedicated her career to supporting nonprofits from diverse sectors in producing measurable outcomes for the people they serve. I love your bio Ana. Please join me in welcoming Ana Kawar.

Anna Kawar: [00:01:00] Hey. Hi, Sharon.It’s great to be here.

Sharon Cline: [00:01:03] Thank you. I’m so happy you’ve made it to this studio today. So again, this is our first show called Fearless Formula. And I know we talk a lot about fearlessness, generally speaking, but actually it’s more about fear and how you manage it. So I wanted to talk to you a little bit about kind of your journey in coming from a different country, coming over here to the United States and kind of how you’ve gotten to the position you’re in. Oh, well, Boys and Girls Club, I know it’s a big broad, but you touch on what you want.

Anna Kawar: [00:01:31] Know it’s a good story. I feel like it really does all tie together for me. So I was born in the Middle East in Jordan. My father is originally Arab American. He was born and raised in New York, but his father is from Jordan. And then my mother is from Dublin, Ireland. So they met in the Middle East and I was born there and I spent most of my life there, although we would go back to the States every once in a while to visit my dad’s brothers and cousins. But one influential point in my life, my to the summer of ninth and 10th grade, my dad said to us, We’re moving to upstate New York. And we were living in Oman at the time, and I’d never been to an American high school, let alone actually live in the States for any amount of time that I could remember. And I was terrified. Absolutely terrified because.

Sharon Cline: [00:02:28] Yeah. What was it?

Anna Kawar: [00:02:29] Well, this and I think this is applicable to a lot of us, but we have you know, I had a lot of preconceived notions about what the states was like, especially especially the world of American teenagers.

Sharon Cline: [00:02:41] Let’s just you know, did you watch like Disney Channel?

Anna Kawar: [00:02:44] Well, first of all, yeah, Jordan TV had basically saved by The Bell Friends and Seinfeld and then, you know, just those typical movies and things about the jocks and the cheerleaders and the nerds and cliques and people getting beaten up and all of.

Sharon Cline: [00:03:01] That scare anybody.

Anna Kawar: [00:03:02] Yeah.So all you all I had in my mind was I’m not going to fit in. I was a nerd. I love school, loved school. My sister was way more popular than me. So she I already knew we were going to be in separate camps.

Sharon Cline: [00:03:15] But was it when you got here? Did it did it live up to your your expectations American?

Anna Kawar: [00:03:21] Well, luckily, we were in a smaller town in upstate New York. So there was there were definitely the groups and the cliques, but it was a small enough school that everybody still got along or knew each other. So I, you know, I fit in pretty well and I kind of had group. I had friends from all different groups, which is really nice. But the biggest thing that impacted me though was just the different the culture shock of going from really some of the poorest countries in the world to the richest country in the world, and the difference in how people live their lives and the issues that they face on a daily basis.

Sharon Cline: [00:04:02] So do you think that that influenced you in wanting to become associated with Boys and Girls Clubs and.

Anna Kawar: [00:04:08] Well, it really it really, I think is where my nonprofit career came from because what the way I say it now, looking back, I couldn’t understand why the richest country in the world had the problems that it did and why people were struggling so much. Though the one of the things that was very obvious to me was that, you know, coming from developing countries, people are resource poor, but their family and happiness rich is kind of how I think about it.

Sharon Cline: [00:04:41] Be interesting.

Anna Kawar: [00:04:42] Culturally. It’s a much more tribal culture. It’s much more based on your social network. That’s what gives you wealth, that’s what gives you status, is what’s your last name, who’s your family? Who are you connected to in the States? We’re very individualistic. We it’s much more about what you own, your resources. And so so if you’re not resource rich, you you kind of almost lose the ability to be happiness rich in this in a sense. And so people I noticed being in this small town in upstate New York where people were pretty poor, you know, living. In mobile homes and on farms and just not necessarily in a city where people had more money. They were also really struggling with broken families, substance abuse, just in very self destructive ways of living. And it confused me. It really confused me. It helped me understand a lot of things about my own family. But it it really confused me because I just thought, why can’t we figure out a way to fix these resource inefficiencies so that people can really live the lives that they could given, you know, what we have in this country? So that really kind of launched my obsession with wanting to fix the social system, not necessarily from a, you know, give everybody everything lens, but more like where are the where are the breakdowns?

Sharon Cline: [00:06:16] So fascinating because someone who lives in this grows up this way may not have that same exact perspective. So it’s a gift in a way for you to come in during your teenage years and see the world that you thought was going to be kind of like Disney, Disneyfied, yeah. Or whatever, and see it now kind of with a different lens. I love that because not everybody gets that gift. So it’s really actually says a lot about your character that you’ve continued on this path for your living. So tell me what you do. I know that you are the implementation and impact director, senior director. It’s very important. Boys and Girls Clubs tell me what that position is like for you.

Anna Kawar: [00:06:58] So essentially my job is to think about how we can improve the level of scale of implementation, which I’ll explain in a second, and the quality of impact. So the way I like to think about it is that we have a lot of great stuff at Boys and Girls Clubs of America, which is our national organization that serves all of the Boys and Girls clubs across the country who are all independent. 501 Threes We have no direct authority over them other than setting a minimum standard of compliance to certain rules and regulations. But they’re all their own organization, their own board, their own culture.

Sharon Cline: [00:07:36] I didn’t know that.

Anna Kawar: [00:07:37] Yeah, and not many people realize that. And so what we what we at National have to do is really through influence and through education. And so we have a lot of great stuff that we can that we’ve developed, that we have, that’s research based, that’s evidence based, that’s proven to work for impacting young people and helping set them up for success, that we need to get out there and help the individual clubs implement successfully. So it’s about building awareness that these tools and resources exist across. And we’re talking close to 1200 independent organizations that we’re trying to work with and and support. It’s a lot of moving parts.

Sharon Cline: [00:08:15] Yeah, I imagine so.

Anna Kawar: [00:08:17] Building awareness of what we have and then supporting them to implement it well and then and ultimately the goal then is to is to create a consistent level of quality across the country where a young person can walk into any single boys and girls club anywhere in the country and be promised the same level of outcomes and experience that we know really will impact them throughout their whole lives.

Sharon Cline: [00:08:42] What I love, too, is you’ve had a lot of celebrities associated with Boys and Girls clubs. So you can can you tell me a little bit about that? I know that we had spoken not long ago about oh, my goodness, Magic Johnson. Yeah, yes, yeah.

Anna Kawar: [00:08:55] Magic Johnson was at our national conference in May in Chicago and was a huge hit. He was he he went he went a little bit rogue in terms of what was planned for his session, but he delivered above and beyond. And it was so fun and people loved him.

Sharon Cline: [00:09:10] Did he talk about being associated with Boys and Girls clubs when he was younger?

Anna Kawar: [00:09:14] Yeah, so we have a number of celebrities that went to the clubs as children, a lot of NFL stars. Hulk Hogan is is associated Denzel Washington as our national spokesperson. So is Jennifer Lopez. We have Misty Copeland, the ballet dancer, learned ballet at Boys and Girls Clubs, was introduced to it. So we have a number of folks that have that went to clubs as children or as teenagers and were and really found their calling in some way through it or were just given a place where they were shown that somebody really cared about their future and felt motivated and supported to to pursue their dreams. And so a lot of folks then are kind enough to come back and share those stories with us, with with folks in the public. And Denzel Washington was just awarded the Presidential Medal of Honor for his service to Boys and Girls Clubs of America, which has been for almost three decades now. Wow. So, yeah, we have a great, great relationships with a lot of. People.

Anna Kawar: [00:10:23] It’s crazy because all of these children whose lives are impacting, there’s no way to see or measure what that exact impact is. So to be able to have people come back and say, this really meant something to my life, it must be very emotional, too. Is that what’s most satisfying for your job? What would you say is most satisfying to you?

Sharon Cline: [00:10:41] I think that for me personally, I know this sounds a little harsh, but I’ve never been one to want to directly work with a young person and and see, you know, I’m not a mother. I’ve I haven’t had children on my own. And and I, I love kids, but I’ve never been one to want to directly mold them or shape them. But what I, what I love doing is helping the people who are really good at that do that even better. So I worked with teachers before this job. I worked in California and education. So I worked with a lot of teachers and principals and school folks that are so unbelievably passionate about what they do and but yet can the system is so complex and they can get so stuck in the bureaucracy. And so my job was to help them break through and find ways to really impact youth in alongside all of the other stuff they had to deal with. But I love finding those paths to impact. I love I’m I’m a mapper. I love to say, okay, if this is where we want to be, how do we get there? What do we know works? What do we know from evidence? How can we test things? What data we need to collect? How can we stay youth focused? How can we stay aligned with our values? And you just said, you know, we don’t always know what’s going to impact a young person, but we do know a lot. One of the scariest statistics is that you can predict whether somebody is going to end up in the prison system by their third grade reading level.

Anna Kawar: [00:12:21] Oh, my goodness.

Sharon Cline: [00:12:22] So where? So there are prison organizations that literally plan for capacity based on the literacy rate of third graders. Oh, gosh, it’s it’s that it’s that predictable. And so we know so much about how to prevent negative outcomes, and we know a lot about how to build positive outcomes. And so that’s really my favorite thing in the world is to watch an organization really get super clear on that North Star and the path towards it and help them lead the way in doing that.

Sharon Cline: [00:12:58] Do you think that there are some some misconceptions about. Boys and Girls Clubs or your industry that you’re in. What are some things that you think that people don’t understand or would need to know?

Anna Kawar: [00:13:09] I think one of the biggest things that we battle is that Boys and Girls clubs are not just a daycare organization. You know, I think in practice it can feel that way because you drop them off and then you pick them up and they’re in this place while you’re at work or whatnot and they’re just playing and having fun. Yeah. But part of that mission of of preparing youth for the future is to ensure that there is a, a curriculum of a set of programs and really thoughtful structures that ensure that that young person is physically safe, emotionally safe and thriving and exposed to opportunities, exposed to ideas for their future and support in their academics. So when they’re in those walls, they are not just being kept physically safe, they are also being developed. And that’s that’s something a lot of folks don’t really understand.

Sharon Cline: [00:14:07] Well, on a personal sort of level, who are your mentors or people that you look to to sort of help navigate through not just this position, but a position you had previously through your career? Did you have a particular person or did you read a particular book that you thought was impactful?

Anna Kawar: [00:14:27] I think.

Anna Kawar: [00:14:28] That.

Anna Kawar: [00:14:29] From on the mentor level of why I’m doing what I’m doing now, I think, you know, I, I graduated from college. I was 21, I was went to Cornell University and I, I finished and I moved to Boston with my best friend at the time. And I had no idea, I honestly had no idea what I wanted to do for a job. I had studied public health. I sort of thought I wanted to go to medical school, but then I switched to public health and I started sending out resumes. And I ended up as an executive assistant at this at this nonprofit, health care nonprofit. And the CEO president CEO at the time was a man named Don Berwick, who I always say, you know, I drank the Kool-Aid very young because I started at 21 in this organization under his leadership and a woman, our chief operating officer was Maureen Bisignano, who was an amazing Bostonian woman with the best Boston accent.

Sharon Cline: [00:15:24] Oh, I love it. Wicked this. Oh, she was great.

Anna Kawar: [00:15:27] And the two of them were pioneers in the field of of quality improvement, specifically in health care. But for me, I fell in love with I thought I wanted to be in health care, but I fell in love with quality improvement. I fell in love with problem solving, with fixing stuff. And and so I’ve always been inspired by their work of really setting the tone and saying there is no reason why we can’t provide reliable outcomes in the social sector. That is kind of what has been my driving force. And but I think on a personal level, you know, I’ve I’ve had a lot of mentors in the sense that I have a lot of people that inspire me. One of my best friends, her name is Lavine. She’s out in San Francisco. We took some time together to work on a leadership development organization. She is I was call her like my soul sister because we went to high school together in Jordan. She’s from Sri Lanka and we graduated together in Jordan.

Sharon Cline: [00:16:36] And she came over here, too.

Anna Kawar: [00:16:37] And then she she ended up in the States as well. And we we she was she’s the person that has always helped me understand myself and my values and what matters to me. And I think if anything has helped me stay focused and manage fear and that imposter syndrome and feeling of doubt, it’s been staying in touch with that y literally feeling it in your chest like this matters to me. This is my purpose. This is why I’m here. This is important. And just I think sometimes I need to do that and just sit there and remind myself of why I’m doing something. And then all the anxiety kind of goes to the background.

Sharon Cline: [00:17:22] Well, if you’re just joining us, we are speaking with Anna Khoury. She is the senior director of implementation and impact at Boys and Girls Clubs of America. What I like that you just talked about is that it’s so easy. I mean, I live in imposter syndrome. That’s my calling card. I’m the best at mental torture and questioning whether or not I deserve anything anyway. I just really appreciate that. You mentioned how having a friend to kind of keep you on track and answer the why is actually so important. Because I get into my head where why is not even just because I want to do this because I want to do this or but having a why shifts the focus out of should I do I need to deserve this how am I good enough any of that but to having actually something to do a problem to solve it becomes about the problem and not about me, I guess. So. I really appreciate you brought that up because I hadn’t thought about it that way. And it’s wonderful that you had early on some very important people in your life that you can kind of go back to and remember what their philosophies are to to continue on with your journey right now.

Anna Kawar: [00:18:29] Yeah, I think I think from a professional standpoint, it took me a while of being a bit lost as we all are, and dealing with some of some of my own stuff from my past that has held me back. And I’ve been working through a lot of that. But but now looking back, it’s a lot it’s become easier to stay in touch with that. And and I think, you know, it’s funny because it it my own personal journey of trying to figure that out aligns with what I do for work. Because for me, a nonprofit organization that doesn’t understand its why and ultimately what it’s trying to accomplish is not going to get very far. And I think that is is true. It’s the same for people. I mean we if you have goals, you need to stay in touch with that y and make sure that it really resonates with you, with you, with your values, with your intentions. With your hopes for yourself.

Sharon Cline: [00:19:28] Do you think that’s how people can almost make, like I’m saying, their own fearless formula? There are ways to combat well in your industry or even just your position. What are some of the ups and downs that you experience that could potentially throw you off track?

Anna Kawar: [00:19:42] Well, I mean, you know, at a if you’re talking from an entrepreneur perspective, I’m sure that there’s a ton when I tried doing it on my own, I mean, I’m not well wired for entrepreneurship just because I I’m very externally motivated and I and I’m very extroverted and I need a lot of people around me. And, you know.

Sharon Cline: [00:20:03] Pandemic must have been hard for you.

Anna Kawar: [00:20:05] Yeah, that was really hard. But so I’m sure, you know, places like here in Woodstock where we have such an amazing entrepreneur community, I can’t imagine the value of that to to to people who are entrepreneurs. But being in a large organization, I mean, Boys and Girls Clubs is a complex animal. It’s massive. I mean, before the pandemic, we were serving 500,000 children would walk through the doors of Boys and Girls Club every day. Wow. We’re talking about half a million youth every day are in some Boys and Girls Club somewhere. And so the scale is immense. And then we have 500 staff or so at the national office. So when you’re working in the level of complexity like that, you can get really lost in both feeling, both being in your own head about what’s the point of doing this. It’s never going to get anywhere. I don’t even. Doesn’t even make sense or even to listen to me. Everybody’s got all these other things going on, you know, there’s that. But then there’s also just navigating the complexity of the organization. How do you get your strategy, your ideas out there? How do you you know, I’m very motivated by problem solving. I don’t care if it’s my idea or not my idea. I just want to solve the problem. So how do we get people in the room? How do we solve the problems? How do we move forward? That’s all that throws me for a loop and I get really overwhelmed. And some actually just had this experience this week where I was feeling super shut down and just very overwhelmed and frozen.

Sharon Cline: [00:21:36] Where do you find your inspiration to kind of come back from that? Because that can derail anybody. That happens to me probably once a day at least.

Anna Kawar: [00:21:42] Yeah. And this was bad. Like it was a couple of days in a row of feeling. Every time I started to do something, this just sinking feeling.

Sharon Cline: [00:21:51] How do you combat that?

Anna Kawar: [00:21:52] Yeah, I mean, I what I was I was lucky enough to have a I’m in a leadership program that that’s wrapping up. And I have an amazing pair of colleagues that were in a little peer coaching group with and we have this great executive coach. So this I’m lucky enough to have that resource and that call was literally that morning and I said, okay, well I guess I’m bringing this to the call even though I feel super vulnerable saying this. But I just was really honest. And and, you know, that’s one of the that’s actually a piece of feedback that I’ve gotten from colleagues is that I’m willing to be vulnerable and that inspires them. So I’m not afraid to go and say, I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m struggling, please help. And and that, I think, humanizes things for other people, too. And then we can have real conversations about what needs to be done. So I said to them, I feel frozen, I feel overwhelmed, I feel stupid for feeling this way because I know exactly what I need to do, but I can’t physically bring myself to do it because I’m so I’m just feeling very lost. And we had just had a whole conversation about purpose and getting tactical and taking it one step at a time. And, you know, we had a pretty high level conversation, but I think something clicked for me where I just said, Anna, do one thing at a time. And I got up on my whiteboard and I just brain dumped everything in my head and just kept massaging it and it came together into a plan. And all of a sudden I was like, Wow, I feel clearer. I feel clearer.

Sharon Cline: [00:23:23] I love the one step at a time because I get overwhelmed as well. But one of the reasons why I wanted to call this show Fearless Formula is because I think that is a very normal human emotion we all experience in so many different ways, and I let fear make decisions for me too often. And so I guess that’s kind of what I like is that when you talk about highlighting an emotion that we all can identify with, there is a level of bravery. It’s vulnerable, but there’s there’s bravery and vulnerability. And so being able to say, I’m over, I don’t even know what I’m doing. Like, that’s for me. I feel like that takes all of the ego and all of the bravado people carry and just kind of breaks it down to just your human. And I’m a human and this is how I feel, whether it has nothing to do with judgment, you know, it just is what it is. And I really appreciate your sharing that because I think many people, including myself, would be much more willing to be like, nah, you know, I’m good, I got it, I got it. But most of the time I’m inside, like. Saying out loud. I don’t think I got anything.

Anna Kawar: [00:24:29] Well, I think I think I can imagine. I know vulnerability is hard for a lot of people, but I think one thing that I like to think about for myself is fear can come from a lot of different places. And I think it’s important to think about where where is that fear coming from. So if I’m scared of being vulnerable, if I’m scared to admit that I’m stuck, why? Where is that fear coming from? Is it because I don’t want to look stupid? Is it because I’m shaming myself for not being able to figure this out myself? So I have colleagues who are much more concerned with status and what people think of them than I am. So for them, being vulnerable in that sense is really hard for me. What what drives my fear is I self shame and I say I should be able to do this.

Sharon Cline: [00:25:15] I’m yourself. I should myself all day long.

Anna Kawar: [00:25:18] There’s no good reason why I can’t do this myself. What’s wrong with you, Anna? So I have to. I have to use different tactics than somebody else would have to use to be vulnerable, because for them, maybe announcing it to a group of four people is a little bit harder. But finding one person you trust is a better way to do it. For me, I don’t mind if they know that I’m struggling, but what I do mind is being judged that I should know better. So I’m not going to go to somebody who’s going to tell me I’m an idiot because I can’t do it myself. Right? So I think I would my recommendation to people would be to get clear on what your where your fear is coming from in that sense, and pick a tactic that specifically addresses that so that you can be vulnerable and ask for help. Because that’s really, at the end of the day, what we all should get better at doing.

Sharon Cline: [00:26:02] What do you think you’re not afraid of anymore? What do you think? You’ve been able to kind of learn a good technique or I mean, tool or tool, something that will kind of help you to ground yourself some. I don’t know. I have been in therapy many times, so I have some techniques. Yeah.

Anna Kawar: [00:26:20] Join the club. You know, one thing that I. One thing that I have gotten better at and that has really helped me is getting more comfortable with the process. So part of that should has been like, I should know the answer and I should know what’s going to happen when and have and and be able to get there quickly. So I’ve gotten much more comfortable with the fact that things take time and I don’t know the answer now. And I have to let things unfold and I have to trust the process and I have to be patient and wait for results or wait for the knowledge or wait for the insight.

Sharon Cline: [00:26:58] So you tell yourself, I just need to be patient.

Anna Kawar: [00:27:01] I tell myself it’ll come out. I told myself so when I’m confused by something. I used to get really frustrated and I used to. And sometimes I would take that out on people around me, as in like, you need to explain this to me. This doesn’t make sense to me. And I would try to force the understanding, and now I’m much more willing to sit back and just let conversations unfold without needing to jump in, without needing to control the conversation, without needing to have an answer. And I just say, you know what? I’m just going to listen and see how this goes for a couple of days. And if I and then I not only will the answer maybe come, but the questions will come, the right questions will come. Because I don’t even know what the I don’t even know what questions to ask right now. And that is also on a personal level, too, like not rushing relationships, not having to have an answer is like what’s going to happen where this is going to go and what does this mean and and friendships and where your life is going and where should I where I grew up moving around the world. I’ve never had a home before, a place where I can put roots down. And I never knew that the first time I walked into Woodstock, I would say to myself, I love this town, I want to live here. And then a year later I buy a house here, and I had no idea that that was going to happen, but I trusted that somewhere would feel that way at some point and I’ve gotten better at that.

Sharon Cline: [00:28:25] Do you think that if like four years ago someone would have said in four years you’re going to own a house and you’re going to live in this town and you’re going to be sitting down roots and it’s not going to be so nomadic and you’re not a gypsy. And all of these things like. Would that have overwhelmed you at that moment? It’s so interesting to me that things happen in the time that you’re ready for them to happen or you allow things to happen when you’re ready. I guess.

Anna Kawar: [00:28:46] I agree. I mean, I was I was married and living in California four years ago. So that would have come as a very big shock. And also, I was still in a place where I was scared to settle down and to like put roots down somewhere because I wasn’t ready to face the fear of commitment that I needed to work through for my own from my own nomad upbringing.

Sharon Cline: [00:29:10] Sorry, it was a nomadic okay to say, because I don’t know if that’s a good word or not. Okay, well, if people wanted to contact you and want more information about what you do, or even more information about Boys and girls clubs or just even to chit chat. With you. What do you think would be the best way for them to contact you?

Anna Kawar: [00:29:28] Yeah, I use LinkedIn a lot so you can find me on LinkedIn and a QR. Ah, I know. It’s a it’s a it’s an Arabic last name. Boys and girls is America. I’m always on there so you can connect with me. I have a pretty big network too, so I’m always happy to connect people with other people. If you’re thinking about nonprofit careers or, you know, definitely happy to connect anyone to to folks they may want to talk to more.

Sharon Cline: [00:29:54] Well, Anna, thank you so much for joining us on. Thank you. I had so much fun chatting with you today. And I hope some people can take some good words of wisdom for themselves. And again, this is Sharon Cline. And I am reminding you that with wisdom and understanding, we can all have our own fearless formula. Have a great day.