Childcare is not a personal problem. It is an economic one, and the system built to support it is underfunded, understaffed, and breaking down.

On She Built It®, Jennifer Cowan, CEO of Connections for Children, a $30 million nonprofit serving the West Side and South Bay of Los Angeles, shares what it actually takes to lead a mission-driven organization through a pandemic, wildfires, a headquarters move, and a national childcare workforce crisis, all while continuing to grow. Jennifer talks about how she turns big ideas into scalable systems, what it takes to align public, private, and community stakeholders around a common goal, and why resiliency and flexibility are the most critical leadership skills in the nonprofit sector today. She also speaks to the founding of New York City’s first Expanded Learning Time model (now replicated nationally) and what leaders need to understand about building something designed to scale.

This is a conversation about systems, leadership, and what it looks like to keep showing up for families when everything around you is changing.

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