The first thing you’ll notice when you talk with Steven Hernández, the new Chair of the Partners Board of Directors, is that he cares.
Steven has dedicated his career to helping others. He served as executive director of the Commission on Women, Children, Seniors, Equity & Opportunity and as Director of Public Policy and Research for the Connecticut Commission on Children. Prior to that, Steven worked in Washington, D.C. as a legislative and budget director and as a law clerk. Now, as executive director of ConnCAN, he works to ensure that all kids in Connecticut have access to a high-quality education, regardless of their address.
Steven said he knows what it’s like to benefit from the care of others. He comes from a culture and a family of strong women and credits his career success to three particular women in his life–his mother, his 6th-grade teacher, and a judge he met after law school.
“Care is really the investment. Care is a real driver of how I live my life and do my work,” Steven said. “In so many ways, we are stewards of each others’ paths, whether we are the parent, the teacher, or the fellow human being. Care is the path to help each other realize our human potential.”
Originally from Chicago, Hernández was raised by a single mother in a tough neighborhood. A critical moment in his life came when his mother chose to move him from his neighborhood school to the nearby Crown magnet school program. There, he gravitated toward the violin and started to learn, via the Suzuki method, at age eight.
“Exposing them to the arts is probably one of the most life-saving things you can do for a kid,” he recalls. “It was really lifesaving for me.”
Steven thrived at school and was convinced he’d be an astronaut, until the Challenger disaster happened when he was in sixth grade. He said his social studies teacher, Mrs. Smith, helped the students process their shock by really listening to them.
“That was a pivotal moment. I had not had someone at the front of the class care like that. There was something really powerful about really being ‘seen’ by an adult,” he said. “It was through her stewardship and guidance that I decided I wanted to become a lawyer.”
After a liberal arts education at Bennington College, Steven went to law school to practice international human rights, but becoming a lawyer wasn’t easy.
“I went to law school when it was very competitive,” he said. “Thankfully, it wasn’t as cutthroat at American University as it might have been. The lore was that at other institutions, you literally had to fight over books in the library; people would hide them so you couldn’t study.”
It was Judge Vanessa Ruiz, who Steven worked with at the Washington, D.C. Court of Appeals in 2002, who inspired him to center his career on helping children right in his own backyard.
“Her care for families and kids stood out,” Steven said. “In her spare time, she focused her efforts on the education of girls. She mentored me to consider a focus on ‘human rights at home.’”
Steven’s experiences have led him to believe that education is not just about teachers and school leaders. It’s about all the things that impact learning, in and out of the school.
“My thought is how do school, family, and community leverage each other?” he said. “How we interact with each other is really critical to how we modernize educational opportunity for kids.”
Exciting Times on the Partners Board
Steven began his involvement with Partners when he was still leading the Commission on Women, Children, Seniors, Equity & Opportunity. The Commission and Partners had, a decade earlier as the Commission on Children and CT Center for School Change, respectively, created Parents Supporting Educational Excellence (Parents SEE). Parents SEE is an intensive professional development program for parents who want to take a more active leadership stance in their communities in relationship to education.
“We taught parents the tools of civics, so they would be able to advocate for their children,” he said. “In the process of governing Parents SEE, Richard and I became close. We had a shared mission. It was then that he talked to me about becoming a leader at Partners.” Steven joined the Partners board in September of 2019.
Steven said his current colleagues on the Partners board have a similar energy to the founders and that the organization is on a steady course of growth.
“The founding board members of Partners were luminaries in the education space,” Steven said. “They’ve left some big shoes to fill. Mendi Blue Paca, the most recent board chair and current president and CEO of the Fairfield County Community Foundation, has passed the baton to me as chair and she’s such a star.”
Steven said Partners’ current board members have doubled down on their commitment and that they understand where the pressure points are; he’s excited about the new energy and depth of expertise everyone brings.
“Ultimately, what are we doing here? We’re building things together,” Steven said. “And the ‘together’ really matters. We improve our own lives by improving the lives of each other. It’s a tone that has been set throughout the life of our organization.”
If you would like to learn more about Steven’s work, or are interested in applying to be on the Partners board, contact Steven.
Partners for Educational Leadership Board of Directors
Steven Hernández, Board Chair
Paul Diego Holzer, Secretary
Robert Blakey, Treasurer
Mendi Blue Paca
David Daye
Jennifer Gifford
Erin Haberman
Dr. Dwayne Smith
