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Meet Christine DeLeon of Moonshot edVentures in Cole Neighborhood

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Today we’d like to introduce you to CDL.

Christine, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Honestly, Moonshot edVentures was my last-ditch effort to stay in education. I felt that over the last ten years I have been in education, I, and so many others, had been working tirelessly, and had seen very little to show in terms of the kinds of transformation we aspired to see in K-12 education for those most underserved and marginalized by the current system. In particular, the gap between students of color and white students in Denver continued to grow, and I didn’t believe that working harder, faster, or more efficiently would change anything. So for me, Moonshot was the opportunity for me to say, “If I had the ability to do what I most believed in, and invested my time in building an organization rooted in a set of values and principles, what would it look like?” This was about the only thing that would keep me in the education sector.

The things that had irked me most were when leaders, from outside the community brought their ideas that they thought were best for communities. To me, I believed that communities were capable of creating the change they wanted to see, and just needed an outlet, support, and resources to create that change.

So, I imagined an idea that is now Moonshot edVentures. It was an idea that combines the concepts of creating new learning environments, putting students at the center, supporting local leaders who came from the communities where they wanted to build something, and providing them with all of the tools, resources, and access needed to make their dream a reality. Moonshot was my dream, and I now know what it feels like to make that a reality. I’m just a believer that a lot of people have their own unique contributions to make to the world, and I have the honor and privilege in supporting leaders to make those dreams a reality as well.

Has it been a smooth road?
Ha! I think this road is anything but smooth, which is both challenging and beautiful. The reality is, when I started Moonshot, I didn’t have a lot of money to put into my idea, so I couldn’t really hire anyone; so, all the jobs were mine, which was cognitively, emotionally, and physically exhausting. Everything from setting a vision, to getting people on board to the vision, to creating and delivering the kind of workshops I believed leaders and entrepreneurs needed, to the hauling of cases of soda and water to my car and then back out to a workshop space. All of the tasks were mine to own, and at the same time, I had to figure out how to make time to raise philanthropy to hire more people.

The challenges, though, are the ways in which, as CEO, I need to balance the needs of people and the organization. For example, as Fellows, who our organization supported, begin to trust me, I became a key one-on-one support to them, while trying to lead the organization through big, strategic ideas; the balance of where to spend time on those two things is hard. Moreover as I built that trust, the relationships had moments of feeling rocky – I would give hard feedback that I think  was/is sometimes hard to hear or make decisions that were in the best interest of the organization, and those were sometimes at odds with people’s feelings or desires. Those moments were soul-crushing because I worked so hard to ensure I was doing my best to support people, and in those moments, my actions seemed to feel at odds with that.

But I learned a few things — about what’s in my control, and what I had to let go, and that being a CEO is about making hard decisions even when they can feel unpopular. In general, though, what I’ve learned is that once I solve one problem, there’s a new one to solve. But then I’ve kind of gotten used to it — that entrepreneurship is just a series of conquering challenges and then facing new ones. And the real art is in staying centered. I used to wear this little silver ring that said, “SURF” stamped on it. It reminded me of the saying that, “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.” It sometimes feels like that’s what I’m trying to do every day.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Moonshot edVentures story. Tell us more about your organization.
Moonshot edVentures is an organization that works to surface and support local leaders to design and launch new learning environments for students. We do this through a cohort-based, part-time program where 15 to 20 leaders each year work with us on developing their leadership, building out the design of their idea alongside communities and getting on the right pathway to launch their idea. We’re values-based at our core, with the belief that local leaders should lead change within their communities and should co-create alongside students and families. We also believe that learning can happen in the form of a new charter school, but it also can happen by our leaders creating new programs that collaborate with schools.

We have a real focus in supporting underrepresented leaders, and over the last three cohorts, we’ve supported 48 Fellows, 81% who identify as people of color, 63% as female, and 2% as genderqueer. This diversity not only creates a richness to our program, but stimulates new, innovative, and community-responsive ideas, from a traveling mental health clinic for LGBTQ+ students to summer programs seeking to support immigrant families, to a STEAM International all-girls school. What I’m most proud of is watching, year after year, leaders start to believe they are entrepreneurs who have the capacity to transform the way students learn, and do it in community with one another.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
I think K-12 education is trying to figure out what’s next. So many of us who work in education started when we were younger, without children, and as more of us have kids, the work is becoming more personal. We’re starting to ask ourselves, “Are we creating something that we would want for our own children?” I think that perspective will change the way we operate. I do think, and hope, we become more community-driven in our approach, and fight for true equity, rather than having it stated, but not lived.

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Image Credit:
Honored Photography; Janelle Dunlap

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