Kwame Owusu-Kesse grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts. His mother worked two jobs as a hospital housekeeper. A scholarship to a Catholic school changed his life trajectory, which Kwame came about because his mother played bingo at the school and the nuns took a liking to her. He calls it “the luck of bingo.”

Kwame seized that opportunity and made it to Harvard, Morgan Stanley, and eventually Harlem Children’s Zone, where he now serves as CEO. He took over in 2020, just as COVID-19 hit New York. HCZ raised $54 million for relief in Harlem and six other cities, before turning the emergency work into a national strategy. He now thinks of Harlem as an R&D lab for fighting intergenerational poverty.

In this conversation with David Deming, Kwame talks about leadership in fundamentally uncertain times, including how he thinks about the difficult decision to close and then reopen schools during a global pandemic, and also why he thinks the Harlem Children’s Zone needs to move beyond education and focus on wealth building.

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