Bridget Lee
I’ve known Bridget, first peripherally and then more closely through shared work, during her time at CPS. When we caught up, I asked her about what she sees as her origin story. She talks about being in second grade in Mrs. Lance’s class and responding to the activity question of ‘what do you want to be when you grow up’. The answer was simple for her, and surprising for her teacher: President. That moment is burned in her mind because it was absolutely serious, seriousness being a consistent trait of hers.
This showed up in the form of all As, being class president, participation in sports and musicals and a myriad of extracurriculars. She wanted to be the best at everything, and growing up as a young black girl in a rural white town in Indiana, she knew the yardstick was different. Her mother always reminded her and her sister that they needed to be twice as good and demonstrably better to be seen. Her mom worked a factory job as a single parent, with 12 hour shifts. In the summers, she would bring her daughters to Chicago suburbs to spend time with family.
During these summers, the desire to move to and live in Chicago, was slowly planted in her mind as they explored the city and all it has to offer. During college summers, she did accounting internships with KPMG in Chicago, and fell even more in love with the city (but not accounting). She decided to join Teach For America, keenly aware of the fact that people who looked like her did not often have access to good education because of their race and zip code. She was aware that proximity to whiteness more often means access to AP classes and resources - and she had benefited from that privilege as a student. But, that was not the experience everyone received. But she could see clearly that the experience she had was vastly different from the experience of the majority of students who looked like her. Her first TFA assignment was in Indianapolis teaching middle school, and she then moved to Chicago in 2015. In 2020, she bought a house and deepened her roots.
I asked her about the career trajectory she has had and if it overlaps with what she envisioned. She tells me that she was definitely not planning to be in education; growing up low-income, her aspirations were based on jobs on television that involved fancy offices and dressing nicely. That part played a role in her majoring in business at Indiana University.
It was during a community service day in Chicago during her accounting internship that she met a 4th grade student who could not read, and she realized through further research how vast the opportunity gap was. But once she was in education, she has been very intentional about her path. She knows that next she wants to be an Executive Director of a non-profit that focuses on serving Chicago, and in the future, she’d like to play a leadership role in Chicago Public Schools.
As with all my interviews, we take a few moments to reflect on missteps or mistakes from which others could learn. She talks about her imposter syndrome and the intertwined perfectionism. Until she participated in the SURGE fellowship in 2018, she did not feel that she deserved to be at the table. To compensate for this, she worked longer hours, which spilled into taking time away from personal pursuits. Young Bridget had to be twice as good to count.
It was the fellowship that helped her realize, and reinforced, that she was enough and she had been enough. She also understood that sometimes when you are focused on getting it done perfectly, you miss the opportunity to get it done right, or even to get it done. Indecision is in a way a decision.
She has learned, through experience, that boundaries are important. People will always test them, it is up to you to stand up for your own boundaries. You can’t pour from an empty cup.
What keeps her going is the intense desire to ensure that the quality of education for young people is not negatively differentiated by zip code and race. Being pissed off about inequitable access to quality education is what started her education career, and she continues to be pissed off. She is energized by complex problems, where the solutions aren’t clear or immediate. Her proudest career moment so far has been designing measures of post-secondary success for options schools, where until that point, the measure was just graduating the students.
Personally, she talks about the fortuitous timing of getting her dog Bebe right before the pandemic. Bebe kept her active and got her out of the house during a time that could have been incredibly lonely and saddening. Through SURGE she also found a group of women friends, who are close and supportive. They do things like Sip + Paint activities, trips, boat tours. She had never left the country until 2018, and once she did, she realized how much she enjoys traveling. It changed her whole sense of how she was alive and living. Whenever she is stuck, she likes to travel as a way of changing her perspective. She enjoys karaoke, and has also performed at three weddings.
Her mom has been one of the biggest influences of her life; she held high hopes and dreams for both her daughters, and this allowed them to imagine it. Even though her mom didn’t finish college, she was her biggest cheerleader for education. She also reflects on seeing Dr. Jackson and Dr. McDade in their leadership roles made her realize the truth of ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’. They both helped break down the stereotypes of leadership which she (and many others) had.
She finds that over the years, there are a couple of frameworks which have become crucial to how she lives, which includes the Strengthsfinder profile by Gallup. She believes that focusing on your strengths gets you a lot further than focusing on your weaknesses. For the Bridget of the future, she wants balance, and to use her gifts to be of service to the greater good. She is a lifelong learner and ready for whatever is next.