LifeWorks is a ‘Leadership Austin baby’

LifeWorks is a youth and family services organization in Austin that focuses on building self-sufficiency for people facing issues such as homelessness, abuse, poverty and emancipation from foster care. LifeWorks was created in 1998 through the merger of Pathways Community Counseling, Child & Family Service, Teenage Parent Council of Austin, and Youth Options. The goal of the merger was to establish a continuum of support for youth and families experiencing crisis.

“The biggest and still ongoing gain from Leadership Austin is that it provided me with a brain trust of reliable, interesting people who are making an impact on our community. We are all mutual champions of each others’ work.”

In the words of Susan McDowell (Essential 19 – 1998):

The creation of LifeWorks is in many ways a Leadership Austin baby.

There were four organizations that were exploring merging our organizations into one. We started those discussions in late 1996, early 1997. At the time, these four organizations were all focused on providing services and support to youth and to families, but in different ways. We began to realize that we were serving a lot of the same clients. We thought perhaps there was a better way to provide these services, and that perhaps a new organization or collaboration would be more efficient and lead the organizations to greater sustainability.

LifeWorks mission is to fearlessly advocate for youth and young adults to pursue a life they love and a stable future for themselves and their families. Our service philosophy is strengths-based and client-centered. Everyone who walks through our door is served with dignity and viewed through the lens of their potential and the goals they set for themselves.

We had been having exploration conversations in 1997. And then lo and behold, for the 1997-98 Essential class, three of us were accepted into that class. Lynn Sherman, Judith Manriquez and I were all there.

Our class had the opportunity early on in our Leadership Austin experience to develop and pitch year-long projects focused on the community. The idea was that the class would vote and choose three or four and then everyone would sign up to a team dedicated to them. So when we decided to pitch the merger as a leadership- and community-based initiative, we wanted the brainpower of Leadership Austin. It was chosen as one project and we had a team of 15 or so classmates to help develop this idea. I like to say that the idea of LifeWorks was conceived before we began our Essential class, but the labor and delivery of the organization happened during our Leadership Austin year.

One of things that they specifically helped us with was developing a way to communicate to the rest of the community why it was important that the four organizations join together.

We wanted to find a way to make it very clear to community leadership that the people who often come in for social services have very complicated problems and that if they had greater access to a wide range of services, then we could be more effective and efficient in helping them.

The Leadership Austin process synthesized a way for us to communicate that idea. And our classmates helped us situate LifeWorks as a project that could be owned by the community, not just be a benefit to the community.

Through this process our classmates also became invested and supportive of the idea. They became longtime champions of LifeWorks.

An incomparable Community Focus

Leadership Austin gives you a 360-degree perspective. They provide cross-sector feedback and an incomparable diversity of leadership and community focus. I don’t think anyone is doing it better.

The biggest and still ongoing gain from Leadership Austin is that it provided me with a brain trust of reliable, interesting people who are making an impact on our community. We are all mutual champions of each others’ work. You have people who are supportive and you can count on them being a part of your team, but it’s also where you go when you need to hear a hard truth or get critical feedback. That’s part of the Leadership Austin process as well: asking the hard questions, being truthful and critical in a helpful way. Nobody is going to jump in and be blindly supportive of a naive or overly ambitious idea. The mindset is “How can we make this work on behalf of the community?”

That could involve a lot of difficult conversations but the trust is there. And we don’t often get that in life. People want to avoid conflict and they are scared of hurting feelings. Leadership Austin offers a safe space for support but also for rigorous analysis and conversation.

-Susan McDowell served as Chief Executive Officer of LifeWorks Austin for 28 years. She is now the Executive Director of the Sooch Foundation. LifeWorks continues to thrive and serve under the leadership of Dr. Liz Schoenfeld (Emerge 10 – 2016).