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At this critical moment of opportunity to break through on some of America’s toughest social challenges, New Profit’s leadership team has been raising its collective voice in the media to highlight promising solutions and foster new dialogue about transformative ideas. Here are a few recent hits:

What We Mean When We Talk About “Empowerment” (Fast Company April 27, 2015): In the latest installment of her 7 Reasons for Social Innovation Optimism series, Managing Partner Kim Syman challenged old notions about empowering constituents and highlighted new solutions being offered by organizations like LIFT, a New Profit portfolio organization:

“[LIFT and other organizations are] either using a new approach or energizing an old one to change the balance of power between people and institutions, opening up possibilities for true transformative change in early childhood development, education, economic empowerment, and public health. In the process, they are doing what social innovators do: challenging orthodoxy, using evidence to refine their practice and constantly adapting to achieve better outcomes. Beyond empowering their constituents in the true sense, they are empowering us to see new approaches that can make big change possible.”

Time To Upgrade From The Walkman In Education (The Hill, April 20, 2015): America Forward Executive Director Deborah Smolover and Senior Advisor Shirley Sagawa published a provocative piece about pushing America’s education system into the 21st century.

“This fall, the class of 2028 will start kindergarten. Last week the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee unanimously passed the Every Child Achieves Act, the long overdue overhaul of the Early and Secondary Education Act, which hasn’t been reauthorized since NCLB passed in 2001. And this actually could be the year that Congress finally passes legislation, with bipartisan support, to update our most important education law. While this new promise of change is too late for the class of 2015, it could be great news for the class of 2028 – but only if Congress passes a bill this time that fully enables schools to innovate on a broad scale as new and better approaches are invented and tested, as they inevitably will be.”

What It Takes to Ensure Every Child Achieves (Huffington Post, June 2, 2015): Partner Shruti Sehra, who leads New Profit’s Reimagine Learning Fund, published a piece about the profound changes afoot in America’s most important education legislation, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

“This is our moment to live up to the oft-stated belief that every child deserves a chance at a good education in our country. While there has been important progress in education over the last 20 years, the fact of the matter remains that too many children find themselves left behind and out of place because of forces beyond their control, including learning and attention issues and the social and emotional affects of poverty, trauma, and toxic stress.”

EXTRA: Read our Statement Applauding Damian Thorman, New Social Innovation Fund Director from Deborah Smolover and Tulaine Montgomery, a New Profit Partner who leads the Pathways Fund.