Holly Low is Manager of Strategic Outreach for the New Jersey Department of Labor & Workforce Development. Host Dr. Sherri Killins Stewart talks with Holly about how she brings an equity lens to her work in state government, specifically in developing strategies to help families access their labor rights and benefits.
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Special thanks to Dr. Aisha Ray, Michelle Stover Wright, The Equity Leaders Action Network (ELAN), and state leaders working in early childhood systems for their thought partnership.
Dr. Sherri Killins Stewart
Welcome to Critical Connections, Leading for Equity, a podcast of the BUILD Initiative. I'm Dr. Sherri Killins Stewart. I am the Director of State Systems Alignment and Integration and Co-Director of State Services. This series focuses on how state leaders have used their role, responsibilities, and influence to intentionally increase opportunity and remove barriers for children and families. You will hear about tangible ways leaders are centering the perspectives of Black, Native American, Latino and Latina, and other populations marginalized by the programs and services within the early childhood system.
Leaders are collaborating across state, regional, and local departments, and agencies to support the well-being of families and children. We don't present as experts, rather participants on a journey with you. I hope you will come as a learner, seeking to take action. Today, we're talking to Holly Low, who serves as Manager of Strategic Outreach for the New Jersey Department of Labor & Workforce Development. Holly earned her bachelor's in sociology from Boston College and holds a master's degree in public policy from the Bloustein School at Rutgers University.
Killins Stewart:
She began her career in community-based environmental justice organizations, where she built successful, mission-oriented, grassroots funding programs. Holly's current work advances the New Jersey Department of Labor's commitment to equitable access to labor protections and benefit programs. She collaborates with the range of stakeholders to reach workers and employers on paid leave, COVID-19 benefits and protections, workers' rights, and more. Holly also works with partner state agencies to improve health and well-being of marginalized children and their families in New Jersey. From 2016 to 2019, Holly held elected office as a member of the Frenchtown Borough Council, and led community-based effort to revitalize the town's most popular park and playground.
Killins Stewart:
Holly joins us today to talk about how she has connected with communities and engaged cross-agency partners to increase opportunity for children and families in New Jersey. Welcome, Holly. I'm so glad you could join me to have this conversation and share your experience.
Holly Low: Thanks, Sherri. It's great to be here.
Killins Stewart:
We are going to have a brief conversation, and you know how much I always want to start with why. Why you're doing something is more important than what we do, so before we dive into the conversation about your work in New Jersey, can you share with me why you're doing work to increase well-being for Black, Native American, Latina, Latino or other families, and how do you stay the course when the work is challenging? Really, what brought you to the work, and what keeps you going?
Low:
I think my why is very rooted in my story of how I grew up and what I learned from my family and the communities I lived in. I grew up in New Jersey in a very diverse, sort of medium-sized municipality that the public school system was, I would say about a third African American, a third Latino, a third white. It was a profound experience, I think, to grow up in a community like that, and it really led me to ask a lot of questions. I always felt called to do sort of social change work, community work, and my experience in that community led me to want to find ways that we could all be more connected together for the betterment of our community, of our school, of our experiences in school. When I had the opportunity to study sociology in college, it sort of started to put those pieces together for me and helped me think about what I had seen.
Low:
Growing up in a community like that, you see racism. You see it playing out. You saw which children ended up sort of going off to college and which children had less opportunity. When I had the opportunity to study sociology, I took a class called Inequality in America, and I felt like it just opened up my eyes and made me want to study all of this in a much deeper way, and really take action. I got involved after college in the environmental justice movement as a volunteer. I'd always cared about the environment, but when I learned of the sort of merging of civil rights and environmental issues, it really pulled together my interest in this way that made sense to me and I wanted to help, so I sort of volunteered my way into a job in Seattle with a community-based group who took me in and sort of said, "Okay, if you're going to do this work, you have a lot to learn. You're going to do anti-racism trainings, you're going to think about class, you're going to find your place here, and we're happy that you're here, and here's how you can be a co-conspirator in this work," and I'm very grateful. When I think about my why, I think about those individuals and those community members who pulled me in and said, "Yes, here's how we can work together," so they're part of my why all the time. Then, I relocated back to the East Coast and worked in another environmental justice group, and again, just had people who continued to teach me and help show me that there was a place for me in this work, and so when I decided to pursue public policy, I always knew that my work would be about trying to undo racism and trying to find ways that all of these communities that I had learned from and worked in could have more access to these programs and benefits that were there for them, but we had always seen how there was a lack of connection, a lack of hearing from communities. The organizations I worked in were really about building community power, about being led by community members, and I could see that that is key to making the change that we want to see. Coming into government, my question has always been, "How do I help bring that to government, help the people I work with make those connections and see that when we partner, it can be really powerful?"
Killins Stewart:
It's so exciting, Holly. I mean, your journey from your own early community-based experiences and paying attention to the choices, individuals got an education to environmental justice, which is such a big issue right now, and lots of data demonstrating the challenges in some communities that don't show up in others, or decisions about where we build, or how we build, or what industry we allow to be in a community. Then, fast-forward to your time now in state government, where you're continuing to ask that question, "And how do you get opportunities to specific families?," then that brings me to my second question, "Is there a particular data point?" We try to understand the root causes, so either through your time in education, you mentioned those who got to go to college and did not. Did you learn anything, or is there a data point that drives you around environmental justice or data point that's driving you now because having data is so important?
Killins Stewart:
You talked about voice, and where are you getting that voice in your current work, but also, are there other quantitative data points that really cause you to center your work around Black, Native American, Latino or Latina populations? Can you give us just an example of the information that's driving you?
Low:
Yeah. A large part of our work is about access to our paid leave laws and programs in New Jersey. We have paid family medical leave benefits, we have a paid sick leave law, and coming in, a lot of research had already been done about, who is aware of these laws and programs, and who's having trouble accessing them on a national level? There's a fair amount of data that just shows that Black and brown communities are less likely to have that access. In New Jersey, we wanted to push a little deeper and do more research to dig into that, and we had the opportunity to do more survey data and research, and some qualitative studies on paid sick leave, in particular, and how workers were able to, were not able to access it.
I can't think of a particular number off hand, but the polling, for example, was showing there was a statistical significance between workers of color and white workers in terms of being, even if they were aware of paid family leave in New Jersey, they had more concerns around retaliation, so even if they knew, "Hey, I can take family leave," worried about losing their job, about not getting that promotion, about missing out on opportunity, so that meaningful access was not really there. That sort of research is what drives our work, and in terms of the paid sick leave law, we have, from our qualitative research that we did, we know that even though immigrant workers are covered under the law, your documentation status does not matter. You are protected under the law. There's legitimate fears around exercising that right to take that sick leave, even if you're aware of it.
Killins Stewart:
Holly, you just talked about data and you gave both number example, how you did studies, and you knew the utilization was low, but then you gave the experience of either immigrant families or Black families as compared to others, so your work is grounded in the voice of families. I know we've done some of that work together, but how did you take action? How did you develop a strategy, which was responsive to both the numbers that often cause people to glaze over, because we've seen the same numbers for year after year after year, and then you heard what people said? Were you able to come up with policies or practices that were responsive to either the numbers or what people were telling you?
Low:
A couple things that are in the works that came out of what we know, we were legislated to create a grant program with community-based organizations so that they could do outreach and education on paid family medical leave, which is fantastic, but the legislation was pretty broad, and just with the simple goal of informing employees about these benefits, we designed the grant program with an equity framework because of what we know from the data and from the voices of families, and we're really excited about it. The entire grant program was written to say, "We know that there are certain communities that are having trouble accessing paid leave in a meaningful way, and our goal is to reach them with this program." That's who is encouraged to apply. That's who we're looking to partner with. That's who we want to learn from.
We will be introducing our first cohort of grantees very soon, and we're really excited to partner with communities that are new to the department. Some of them have had relationships with us in the past, but we're really excited about this new way to partner, to learn, to collaborate. With the understanding that when we learn from particular communities that have been furthest from opportunity, it's going to benefit all New Jersey workers because the sorts of improvements that we'll be making to the program, we're constantly trying to improve the actual benefits program and how the benefits are paid out when it comes to paid family leave. Those program improvements that we make help everybody across the state, and when it comes to paid sick leave, understanding what's happening on the ground with employers. When there's workers who, it's harder for them to exercise their rights in the workplace, we learn from that, and we find out, "Okay. On the employer side, what kind of outreach and education needs to happen?"
Low:
"What kind of messages need to make it out to employers? How can this inform strategic enforcement efforts?" When we are learning from workers who are in a particular sector or industry, we have a whole new strategic enforcement approach that the agency's been implementing that is really going to focus on sectors that have the lowest rates of complaints and the highest rates of violations, so really, taking what we learn from our grant program and putting it there will make a real impact, we hope.
Killins Stewart:
That's exciting, Holly, and it brings me to the fact that often, when we listen to community deeply, as you've described, and you're working with employers, a lot of what we hear won't be things that you can respond to, so it's so important that we're working with other programs, and people, and structures, because this really isn't solo work. Who do you collaborate with to really respond to what you hear from employers or what you hear from workers to really create systemic opportunities, and then what are the challenges to that collaboration?
Low:
One of the ways we try to work across systems is through an interdepartmental planning group of state agencies, that in New Jersey, came together around federal preschool funding, and those agencies continue to collaborate and partner so that we can align better when it comes to serving families with young children. We've had really great collaborations since I have joined the Department of Labor, and some of the challenges around that are, and this is not just in government, it's across sectors, we are having a hard time getting enough people to help make all this work happen in government, right? That is a real challenge right now. It requires people power to collaborate across systems, that requires a lot of time and relationship building, so that's one challenge. I think in a state system, we're also ...
Low:
Every agency has its tasks at hand that it has to attend to, and that's how we're set up, right? This agency is in charge of XYZ. This agency is in charge of ABC. Making that space to say, "Where are the links? Where are the connections? How do we do this better?," is another layer of work. I feel really proud and happy about the level of coordination that we have here.
Killins Stewart:
Can you talk about a concrete example, though, of a project where you listen to families, and then you needed more than one agency to be responsive, because honestly, your work goes back to race to the top, so you've got years with your interdepartmental planning group. Can you give an example of something that you worked on together with that group?
Low:
One example that, and actually, BUILD was our partner in this work, was the Project HOPE work. This was an initiative in New Jersey to really find ways across systems in New Jersey to better support families with young children and increase their access to state-funded programs and services. We engaged in a process with BUILD to listen to communities that we knew from the data had adverse outcomes when it came to parents and their children in terms of their health. One of the things that that led to, as we listened to people speaking about the labor and Workforce Development services, in particular, in their community, their challenges, accessing services there, not feeling particularly welcome, or in some instances feeling like they got some help, but it didn't get them where they needed to be, along with the challenge of having care for their children so that they can take advantage of training and employment opportunities that we may have, we decided to start a pilot where we've really went deep with the Labor & Workforce one-stops in those counties, and the Workforce Development boards, and our Child Care and Head Start partners, and we did a year-long pilot where we dug in together to think about, "This is what we have heard. How can we do better?"
Low:
"How can we support one another to identify ways to tailor our services to families with young children?" One of the things that we learned from shadowing a worker through the one-stop was that he was really challenged because of his child support obligations to the state. It's a different type of debt that was new to many of us. We didn't realize an individual who had received TANF services could, in addition to having child support debt to the other parent, could also have debt to the state for services received. This was a clear example of, "Wow. Well, okay."
Low:
"Let's go to the agency that's working on this. Let's check in with them and learn from them, and see what their thoughts are on this," and so that's where we went, and human services was really happy to hear from us because during the pandemic, a lot of things got put on hold. This happened across all of our lives and in government programming and partnerships as well, and they said to us, "Well, this is great. We were just starting this working group with labor around child support, and this is one of the issues that we really wanted to tackle, and we're so happy you're coming back to us. Let's get started again. Let's pick this up," because things were finally calming down with the pandemic, so they jump-started their working group again, and a big piece for us in this effort is, "How can the one-stops and the activities that a person engages in at the one-stop help relieve that debt?"
Low:
That's a conversation in the child support sector they're already having. There's different ways that an individual can get debt relief to the state by participating in different activities, so we're really hoping we can identify some ways that one-stop activities can count towards that, and the work has begun on that level, so we're really happy about that.
Killins Stewart:
That is really powerful, Holly, because the last conversations that we had, you got some child care in those areas, you got child care providers, and Head Start, thinking about labor, and building bridges in those relationships, but the idea that you continue to build and expand your network as you listen to families is so critically important, and that's my next question. As a leader, how do you keep building your network? On the one hand, you shared that in the pandemic, there's not enough workers to do all that's necessary, that many departments are siloed with their own responsibilities, and this idea of collaboration takes a little extra effort, but you just gave a powerful example about how that benefits the citizens, and so how do you continue to build your network and build relationships so that you can be responsive, especially to those families that are farthest from opportunity?
Low:
When you connect with that person who is clearly, you're on that same wavelength and you know that you're on this path together, deepening that relationship, trying to get to know each other's work and find ways that you can support one another and align, and I think also, sometimes it's going to be more challenging than that, and it's people who you're going to have to work with to move forward. We talked about this in my Elon fellowship cohort recently about just this idea of those challenging work relationships where you're trying to do equity work, and it's more difficult just sort of riding that wave, that there's going to be times where it's more challenging, but not giving up, handling your energy carefully, being strategic, finding what your value proposition is for that person, because the equity argument just might not work for them, but not letting that stop you, and also knowing, and I learned this from you, Sherri, that you just don't need everybody.
Killins Stewart: Right.
Low:
You just need enough people to make the change happen, so kind of relentlessly moving forward. Then, there-
Killins Stewart: Stay in the course?
Low: Yes, and resting when you need to.
Killins Stewart:
Yes. Yeah, that's so powerful, and so the next question is, when you think about state leaders who, as you said, might be under resource at this point, have been given a specific job, don't see their way into the collaboration, but knowing that as a state leader, beginning this work, centering marginalized children and families is so critical for the success of our states and the success of our nation. What advice would you give another state leader?
Low:
I would definitely say that staying connected to a national network of other state leaders who care about equity, who are trying to do equity work at the state level is really important to me and has given me a lot of energy, and hope, and concrete ideas so organizations like the BUILD Initiative are definitely key, and I think we need that to move forward in our individual states.
Killins Stewart:
Where do you see hope in the horizon? These are difficult, difficult times. If you turn on the news, it doesn't take long to find something about children and families. That's disheartening, so where do you see hope on the horizon?
Low:
I find my hope by staying engaged in my immediate local community. I find that I need that to balance out my state work because the pace at which things move at the state level can be challenging, so I really love being engaged in my local community in different volunteer efforts that are equity-focused. It brings me energy and joy to connect in that way. It's great practice, right? In some sense, it's very different from my state role, but it feeds what I do in my state role and helps me remember what it's like to do grassroots community work, and it helps me stay a little humble, I guess, that it's just hard to get people together, talk about something that we care about, and kind of find a way to take action as a community. That's really hard work, and those are the kinds of groups that we're trying to partner with at the state level.
Killins Stewart:
Yeah, Holly, that's so important because so often, we spend too much time thinking about the national news, and in fact, the work is happening eyeball-to-eyeball with people in neighborhoods and in communities, and so I'm so glad you brought us back to that, that we have to both pay attention to states and the nation, but right next door, right in your own community, there are things you can do, and I am so excited to read in your bio about a playground because it's one of the examples. I use that. When cities often get money, they spread it to 10 places, when often, we've got to go deep in one place where we've disinvested for a long time, and so it was exciting to see that you had done that work. I really want to thank you for being with us today and sharing your story through this podcast with our community. Lots of lessons for leaders who may feel isolated or are not sure what step to take, and so really appreciate you sharing your successes and your challenges.
I want to thank you all for joining us. If you've gained an insight from today's episode, please let us know by leaving a comment, giving us a rating, or sharing it with your colleagues. Critical Connection, Leadings for Equity is a podcast of the BUILD Initiative. It is produced by LWC Studios. Producers are Kandice Cole and Paulina Velasco.
Killins Stewart:
Build Initiative partners with state leaders to promote equitable, high-quality child and family serving systems that result in young children thriving and learning. To learn more about BUILD's work, visit our website at www.buildinitiative.org. I'm Dr. Sherri Killins Stewart. Thank you so much for listening.
CITATION:
Killins Stewart, Sherri, host. “Expanding Networks in Labor to Advance Systemic Change .” Critical Connections, BUILD Initiative, October 18, 2022, www.buildinitiative.org.