Lauren Feldman
I’ve known Lauren for many years when she was working at CPS. We had the opportunity to partner on some meaningful and difficult work, including when the pandemic forced education to become remote completely - the setting up of vaccination centers at different schools will forever be among some of the work that challenged and taught me the most.
I honestly can’t remember a moment where she wasn’t motivated or driven to solve and keep things going.
During her childhood, both her parents had careers which involved helping others, and this shaped her life choices and decisions. Her father was a doctor and her mother was a social worker, and they both spent their days helping people in a variety of ways. During college, volunteering was an important value, and led her to spend time volunteering in rural Nicaragua. That was an eye-opening experience for her in different ways, including in helping her realize that there was much poverty and want in her own backyard back in the US.
Her undergraduate was in Industrial Labor Relations – she laughs that this choice was driven a little by the fact that she didn’t like Math or Science. Throughout her education and her career she has wanted to find purpose and figuring out what is the sort of work she likes to do versus not. Every job has helped her figure this out even more and create a sweet spot where micro activities and the big picture balance out.
I ask her if there are any mistakes or learnings from her early career she would like to share, and she says she would remind her younger self to believe in herself but also stay humble - to never forget that there is A LOT to learn.
Another lesson she cites from a teacher was to “find her superpower”, and then find the job/organization that needs and values that superpower. For her it is building trust, relationships and leveraging it across teams. She graduated in 2009, a time when not many jobs were available. She had done a lot of work organizing public service activities. Through Teach For America, she had the chance to teach students but knew that classroom management, grading etc was not for her. She also realized that any school administration professional also needs skill in accounting, finance and more. So she chose to do her MBA at Kellogg, and afterwards wanted to take what she had learned and apply it in the real world.
She joined McKinsey to learn from the best, and after a few years, joined CPS to apply what she had learned in the private sector back in the education sector. She is incredibly proud of the work she did at CPS, especially working to support students, families and staff across the city during the COVID-19 pandemic. In her next role she worked with school districts across the country to build programs to increase student achievement in things like reading proficiency, math achievement and attendance improvements. Now, she has come back to working locally in Chicago as the Chief Operating Officer of Cara Collective, which works to support jobseekers to transform their lives and find meaningful employment, in Chicago and across the country.
Cara’s mission is the macro and the work she does with her co-workers and partners daily support the mission, making it the perfect fit, while also being a healthy challenge.
Outside of work, she spends time with her family, including her two kids who keep her busy running around and learning new definitions of what it means to be patient.
For the Lauren of the future, she genuinely hopes to be at Cara, staying and learning in the role she has. I ask her about who some of the key influences in her life have been in addition to her parents, who have played a formative role. Each phase of life has brought different ones for her, whether the first boss from whom she learned what not to do or the mentors at McKinsey and CPS who both coached and pushed her to grow in a kind way.
We wrap up as she heads into another meeting, full steam in during the first week of her new job, and I can’t wait to see what lies ahead for her!