Lesley Poole on Seeds of Optimism

Intentional Performers with Brian Levenson

Lesley Poole serves as the chief executive officer for The SEED Foundation (www.seedfoundation.com). She is responsible for the overall health and vitality of SEED’s network of public, college-preparatory boarding schools and SEED’s mission-critical college success programming.

Lesley has been serving the students and families of the SEED community since 1998. She was one of the founding faculty at The SEED School of Washington, D.C., and held several positions during her tenure. At The SEED Foundation, Lesley’s expertise in government relations and philanthropy has been instrumental in securing the public-private partnerships necessary in Annapolis, MD; Tallahassee, FL; and Los Angeles, CA, to make The SEED School of Maryland, The SEED School of Miami, and The SEED School of Los Angeles possible.

Lesley began her career in education as a mathematics instructor and later served as the service area director for the school division of San Francisco Educational Services (SFED). She holds a bachelor's degree from Patten College in organizational management.

Lesley is a member of the spring 2017 cohort of Pahara-Aspen Fellows, which seeks to strengthen and sustain diverse, high-potential leaders who are reimagining public education. She is also a fellow with Seeding Disruption, a fellowship that brings together a diverse group of Washington, D.C.’s, senior leaders to generate, seed, and catalyze disruptive practices for the purpose of dismantling systems of racial inequity. Lesley serves on the board of Educare, an early childhood education school and community center in Washington, D.C.’s, Ward 7, as well as Excellence Christian School, located in Upper Marlboro, Maryland.

Lesley had a number of amazing insights during our conversation. Some of them include:

“My optimism fuels my leadership and how I see the world” (6:50).

“What started in 1998 is I grew a family which has also created a network for young people” (8:35).

“Don’t get on every bandwagon, but the ones you get on ride them to the end” (10:50).

“[Optimism] can be modeled… [and] if someone is motivated, it can be learned” (11:30).

“If I had to list my core values, optimism, over the course of 25 years, has increasingly become in the top 5” (12:20).

“I am fiercely loyal. If you are my friend, you are my friend” (13:05).

“I don’t know if my loyalty gets in the way, but it certainly comes with a cost” (14:30).

“I’ve built in myself a sense of comfort with not knowing how to accomplish something” (15:30).

“We need to double down on opportunity to learn” (18:30).

“If we create a space for being comfortable with not knowing, then we also create this intentional opportunity to innovate” (18:45).

“Part of how we foster a spark [at SEED] is we find opportunities” (21:55).

“We believe in community” (26:25).

“The boarding experience is an opportunity of discovering” (30:15).

“We all have to live in various worlds” (31:00).

“We all have an innate need to be proud and to belong” (42:30).

“A community not being resource rich doesn’t say anything about the people [who belong to it]” (43:10).

“We all experience some burnout” (52:50).

“Every day, at some point in the day, I sit with at least 15-30 minutes of quiet” (53:00).

“I spend a lot of time asking myself how I’m doing” (54:00).

“What I’m trying to do is create an environment of transformational leaders who really own the vision of SEED and we are all intentionally moving in the same direction” (57:00).

Additionally, please visit SEED at www.seedfoundation.com!

Thank you so much to Lesley for coming on the podcast!

I wrote a book called “Shift Your Mind” that was released in October of 2020, and you can order it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Additionally, I have launched a company called Strong Skills, and I encourage you to check out our new website https://www.strongskills.co/. If you liked this episode and/or any others, please follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers.

Thanks for listening.