Harlem Children’s Zone Prepares for Life After a High-Profile Leader

Few charities in the country are as closely identified with their leaders as Harlem Children’s Zone. Geoffrey Canada, the group’s charismatic chief executive, has won widespread acclaim for his efforts to break the cycle of poverty by providing a comprehensive network of educational, medical, and social services to children and their families in a 100-block area of Harlem.

He has been profiled in countless news stories; was the subject of a book, Whatever It Takes, by Paul Tough; and featured prominently in “Waiting for ‘Superman,’” a 2010 documentary that cast a harsh light on the country’s public-school system.

But starting in July, Harlem Children’s Zone will face life without Mr. Canada at the helm.

Mr. Canada, 62, announced this month that he plans to step down as chief executive, a position he has held for more than 20 years, and will hand the reins to Anne Williams-Isom, the group’s chief operating officer since 2009.

Mr. Canada, who will keep the title of president, said he and the board had been planning his transition for several years and that he originally hoped to have a successor in place by the time he was 60.

“I have been concerned that one of the major strategic errors that not-for-profit leaders make is they don’t take succession planning seriously,” he said in an interview.

‘Kindred Spirit’

Mr. Canada said it became clear about two-and-a-half years ago that Ms. Williams-Isom, whom he called a “kindred spirit,” was the obvious candidate to succeed him.

“Anne was the one person I found that had what’s needed for this job: tough-minded leadership, dedication to our mission, and the capacity to love thousands of kids,” he said in a statement.

Under Mr. Canada’s leadership, Harlem Children’s Zone pioneered a “cradle to college” poverty-fighting approach that has been widely imitated. Community leaders from across the country attend the charity’s workshops to learn how to adopt the group’s approach.

President Obama is a vocal fan of the group, and shortly after taking office he persuaded Congress to create the Promise Neighborhoods grants program. This year it is providing $57-million to help nonprofits, foundations, businesses, and others in 12 communities set up projects modeled on the Harlem Children’s Zone project. The president originally wanted a much bigger budget for the program but failed to get deficit-conscious lawmakers to agree.

Closing the Racial Gap

But Mr. Canada—whose group has a $100-million budget, thanks partly to help from wealthy donors like Stanley Druckenmiller, a former hedge-fund investor who chairs the board—has also been criticized for unfairly demonizing public-school unions and promoting a “corporate-reform agenda.”

Harlem Children’s Zone runs two Promise Academy charter schools, which accept students by lottery. They have longer school days and longer academic terms than traditional public schools. Harlem Children’s Zone also provides after-school programs and other help to more than 10,000 public-school students, and it operates a preschool program, child-rearing classes, and college-admissions and mentoring services.

At an event to announce Mr. Canada’s move, Mr. Druckenmiller cited several statistics to demonstrate the program’s success. He said 78 percent of college students who have attended the Promise Academy or got after-school help are on track to graduate within six years—compared with a national average of 62 percent for whites and 40 percent for blacks.

He also referred to a study done in 2009 by two Harvard University researchers showing that the Promise Academy middle school had closed the black-white achievement gap in math and cut it in half for English.

Achievements Questioned

Critics have also raised questions over the years, however, about how extensive the successes are. In August, Diane Ravitch, an education historian, highlighted Promise Academy scores on New York’s recent “common core” educational standards tests. They were “all over the map,” she wrote on her blog, with some sharply higher and some much lower than the city average. “Bottom line,” she wrote, is that “there is no miracle here.”

Mr. Canada said he wants his group’s schools to score higher on those tests, but that Ms. Ravitch would find more impressive results if she compared the Promise Academy schools with others in Harlem rather than with the city average.

Ms. Williams-Isom—who served for 13 years in New York’s Administration for Children’s Services, including as deputy commissioner for community and governmental affairs—said in an interview that Mr. Canada acknowledges that the Harlem Children’s Zone project has not reached 100 percent of its goals and is “about 70 percent there.”

She said she has been focusing on the 30 percent of the problems that still need to be fixed. For example, she wants the organization to pay more attention to data about whether individual students are making progress in areas like academics and health and to deepen the use of a tool she helped create. Called “HCZ Stat,” it brings together staff members to draw up specific strategies for helping the organization’s toughest cases.

Mr. Canada said Harlem Children’s Zone will wrap up a campaign to increase its endowment from $160-million to $400-million before he leaves.

He said he has no other immediate job plans and will come in to the office once a week to serve as an adviser to Ms. Williams-Isom.

Mr. Canada said he is not withdrawing completely from the charity because his “for-profit advisers” warned that an abrupt departure could shake confidence in the organization. “They felt people would be comforted to know I’m around in the background somewhere.”

Mark Lipton, a leadership-transition expert at the New School for Public Engagement, said that kind of arrangement could be problematic, however, especially since the nonprofit is so closely identified with Mr. Canada. That means his management style is “thoroughly baked into the culture of the place.”

Given his continuing role with the organization, Mr. Lipton said, a key question is: “What kind of runway does the new ‘leader’ have to really lead?”

Mr. Canada said he is well aware of the danger of undermining his successor, and he plans to make it clear that she is in charge.

“My main job is not to get in the way of Anne’s leadership,” he says.