Pursuing a North Star Through Cloudy Skies with Leonard Burton
About This Episode
Let’s begin with a middle school stage play in Detroit. The lights are dim, the demerits are high, and a boy named Leonard has just been kicked off the production. Enter Miss Liggins, a teacher with a different script. She doesn’t erase the consequences—she rewrites the role. “You’ll be our stage manager,” she says. And with that, a seed is planted: that someone’s belief in you, especially when you don’t believe in yourself, can change everything.
This is how Leonard Burton’s story begins. But it’s hardly where it ends.
This week, Carrie Fox sits down with Leonard—now President and CEO of the Center for the Study of Social Policy—to trace the arc of a life lived in service to justice, from the east side of Detroit to the deserts of Saudi Arabia, from family hardship to national leadership. It’s a story that defies neat narrative structure. Because Leonard’s journey isn’t linear, it’s layered—built on memories, mentors, and moments of moral clarity that refuse to fade.
Leonard talks about the indignity of a two-tiered chemotherapy room—one for Medicaid patients, one for the privately insured. He recounts the sounds of Scud missiles in Desert Storm, and the sight of a paraplegic neighbor who gave him his first view of the world outside his block. He shares the transformative experience of sitting in a village in apartheid South Africa, watching democracy unfold not with slogans or soundbites, but with silence, patience, and consensus.
And through it all, he makes the case—not with urgency, but with gravity-that that justice is not an abstraction. It is food on the table. It is health care with dignity. It is family autonomy and the freedom to imagine a better future.
Now, as the leader of CSSP, Leonard is advancing a bold North Star strategy grounded in three pillars: health justice, economic justice, and family autonomy — all threaded through with racial justice. His is a call to hold fast when others are retreating, to keep the lights on when the grid is under attack.
Leonard’s message is clear: This is not the time to shrink. This is not the time to compromise on values in exchange for comfort. This is the time to light candles if the power fails, to widen the circle, and to remember — in the words of his mentor, Collins Ramusi — “Forward ever, backwards never.”
Links & Notes
Learn more about the Center for the Study of Social Policy
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Intro:
The only thing that's going to matter.
Look at what you're doing right now.
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Carrie Fox:
Hi, friend, and welcome to the Mission Forward podcast. I'm Carrie Fox, your host and CEO of Mission Partners, a social impact communications firm and certified B corporation. Thanks for tuning in to this very special episode. And if you are new here, wow, what a great conversation to start in on.
In every episode of this show, which is now in its 10th season, we listen to and learn from inspiring social impact leaders who are moving their missions forward in thoughtful, creative, and remarkable ways. And today's guest is a perfect example of this. Before I introduce him though, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever had the opportunity to work with or witness a leader who inspires you purely for being themselves? Someone who has such great vision and optimism that you can't help but want to follow them because they are just so naturally and contagiously inspiring. Taking on challenges that most people see as too impossible or too complicated. These leaders instead say, "Let's take it on."
Well, today's guest is that kind of leader. I know, because I'm one who has been following him for the better part of 20 years. Many of you on this show have heard me talk about Success Beyond 18, the national campaign we developed to transform the foster care system. Well, today's guest was one of the brilliant minds behind that effort, and it was his vision that had me run after how to make that campaign. And the very real and positive change we created a reality.
I talk about Success Beyond 18 campaign a lot because it was so formative to me as a social impact communicator. And Leonard Burton, who we have with us today, one of the chief architects of that effort, was the person who gave me a north star to run after. Today, we get to talk with Leonard, who now serves as CEO of the Center for the Study of Social Policy, about his north star. The north star he is running after in partnership with his team at CSSP, and we'll learn what inspires him along that sometimes cloudy journey. Leonard, welcome to Mission Forward.
Leonard Burton:
Thank you, Carrie. It's so good to be with you today.
Carrie Fox:
It's great to have you here. Leonard, I just mentioned I've known you for a long time. I've been inspired by you for a long time. There's a lot I don't know. Take me back. Tell me how you found yourself in this incredible and inspiring work that you do now.
Leonard Burton:
And we've known each other for over two decades now. And when I think back of how I got to where I am now, I have to go back to the east side of Detroit, Michigan, where I was born and raised in what was a working class community in the 1960s, in the early 70s. Parents that come from a working class of parents who went from working class to working poor very quickly. As we started to see white flight happening in the inner city of Detroit. As this little kid going to the Whitney Young Middle School in Detroit, Michigan, and having folks like Mr. Crimes and Ms. Liggins who would wrap their arms around us and love us. I was little kid. I was a kid who could get in some trouble at times, if you will.
We had this merit system at our middle school, and I had reached the maximum number of demerits. I had reached 10. And then my classmates were going on a big field trip. And on the big field trip I couldn't go because I had too many demerits. I had to stay back, and Ms. Liggins was the teacher who stayed back with myself and the others who had those major demerits. And we were also in preparation for a musical, a school musical. And I'd been kicked off the musical team because I had too many demerits. Ms. Liggins said, "Leonard, I want you to be the stage manager now, and do the lights." She gave me an opportunity. When everything looked dim and dark, there was a Ms. Liggins in the space who said, "But I need to give you another opportunity."
Throughout my life, there are people who've given me opportunities. I grew up with Reggie Bonds, who was a paraplegic in my neighborhood. Reggie lives six houses down. But Reggie Bonds was the man who took me and other young men in the community to our first baseball game at Tiger Stadium. The first time I had ate a five-star restaurant in the Renaissance Center on the top floor in the revolving restaurant at the Renaissance Center. It was Reggie Bonds who, on his crutches, riding the city bus, took me to Tiger Stadium into the Renaissance Center. There were people in that community, in a self-sustaining community that, again, went from working class to working poor, that cared about the children in the community.
I left there, I left Detroit and went off to school in Oklahoma at Langston University, HBCU. Langston University had the culture shock going from inner-city Detroit to Oklahoma. And lived there for several years, but then joined the military. While I was in college, my mother became ill and had metastatic breast cancer, and succumbed to the illness. My mother had been a paraprofessional in the school system, and that she had been a dietary aide, a cook at hospitals, and things of that nature. My father had worked at Chrysler and at other warehouses in Detroit, and he got injured and hurt himself, so he was became disabled with back problems. And then my father became addicted to opioids in the late 70s, early 80s.
And I watched this man who was the light of my life, the strength, the joy, the most humble and meek, and yet strong man raising four boys and a little girl, become injured and then succumb to opioids. My mother is sick, she passes. But before she passes, now she's laid off from her job. And then she has to... I remember walking from my house on Holcomb and St. Paul up to Kercheval, and making that left-hand turn and walking a mile to Department of Human Services, to the welfare office so that she could get some food stamps to feed us.
And I remember sitting in that office with my mother, and the pain on her face, but knowing that she had to do this in order to feed the family. And how it took away some of her agency as a strong woman who had children that she needed to care for. And in her body being afflicted with cancer at the same time, doing what she needed to do to make sure that we could eat and have a modicum of decent clothing to wear. As my mother goes through chemotherapy, and she's on Medicaid and getting her chemotherapy, this is why the dignity of healthcare and the importance of healthcare to me matters. Is when she got her chemotherapy, there was a room where people on Medicaid got their treatment, and then those with private insurance had another room that they could go and get their treatment.
It's that dignity that people... Or the lack of dignity that people without means had to suffer through in order to get what they needed. Those are the things, those formative experiences in my life helped shape me. And then I went to the military and served in the Army. And went to Desert Storm, served in Saudi Arabia doing Desert Storm, watching Scud missiles fly over your head. And I'm in a 400 bed evacuation hospital and I'm seeing injured personnel and children, and I'm seeing babies with shrapnel in their face. And I'm seeing families from whether it was Saudi Arabia or Iraq, or another nation coming to our hospital being treated. And I'm seeing the horrors of war. And I'm watching what's happening to children and families being destroyed by a military industrial complex all for resources that people wanted.
But before I went to Saudi Arabia, I'm a part of this little Baptist church in Clarksville, Tennessee, called the Green Hill Church. And I'm working. I'm still in the military, but I'm also have a part-time job with this organization called Kids In Control. It was a small organization of kids who lived in the projects in the Lincoln Home projects of Clarksville, Tennessee. And I was one of these people who did the afterschool, helping do some tutoring after school. And these were kids who had been written off. And that reminded me of me being that same kid that was being written off, but Ms. Liggins said, "No, there's something valuable about you. There's some worth in you." I gave back to those kids in Lincoln Homes what Ms. Liggins gave to me at Whitney Young Middle School in Detroit.
It was something that was poured into me by Ms. Liggins, by my mother, who was a paraprofessional in school. By my father who cared for his kids, but then got addicted. It was by Reggie Bonds who took me and walked me and showed me... Reggie also made prosthetic teeth. And he would take me to his lab, to the dental lab, and showed me how they made teeth. How they made false teeth. And he gave me those experiences. What people poured into me, I knew I had a responsibility to pour back into other people.
Carrie Fox:
Right. Right.
Leonard Burton:
That's what brings me to the type of work that I do. I worked at Kids In Control. Came back from Desert Storm and then created this program at our church, at the Green Hill Church, called Project SAVE. S-A-V-E, Strengthening Adolescent Values and Esteem. And these were some of the same kids who had been at Lincoln Homes or were in the neighborhood who needed some afterschool tutoring, who needed to know who they were as Black and brown kids in the city. I started that program and ran it through a grant from the Black Healthcare Commission from the Department of Health in the state of Tennessee. And that brought me to having this unfettered commitment to serving the least, the lost, and the left behind.
Carrie Fox:
Thank you for sharing so much of that with me. I almost paused you at the very beginning and said... As you were talking about being a kid getting in trouble, I was about to say, "Oh, but I bet you it was good trouble." But now that I think about all of those experiences coming together, it has been good trouble, Leonard. Everything you've done throughout your life has been about helping those all around you, and using your own personal experiences to pour that love back into the work that you do. And that's what always has been so present with me about you, Leonard, is that you are so pure in your commitment and care for people.
Yeah. I also appreciate... I mentioned the word formative at the top of this. That you were formative in my career, in my professional development. But you also just shared a lot about your own formative years and how they shaped you. When you think about moving from Detroit and then Tennessee, and the work you were doing in Tennessee, and around the world as part of the service to our nation. And now here you are at Center for the Study of Social Policy. And you're sitting in a different perch, but in the same work. It seems like your goal has never changed, but how you deliver that goal has. And I'd love you to talk a little bit about, who is the Center for the Study of Social Policy, and why is it so important to do this work?
Leonard Burton:
Yeah. The Center for the Study of Social Policy is an amazing 45-year-old organization. From its birth, from its inception, from Tom Joe, who was this MacArthur genius. This blind, Korean MacArthur genius who decided that economic injustice was not something that he could sit idly by and watch happen. Tom is always... From the beginning, Tom and other scholars, Doug Nelson and Judy Melter and others, focused on anti-poverty work and racial justice work.
I'm a fortunate kid from the east side of Detroit who now can sit in the space and stand on the shoulders of Tom Joe and others who created this national nonprofit that seeks to make sure that children and families are whole. That communities can thrive. That communities have what they need from a public policy perspective to be successful. for 45 years, we've had significant influence on social and human services field. And it gives and from human... I'm sorry. And from the social and human services field. And it gives me great pride and gratitude to be able to sit in this space as the leader working to transform deep end systems that have sought to improve the lives of people. And sometimes these deep end systems, like the foster care system or the child welfare system that now many of us call the family policing system, has deviated from its charge and really not become a helping system, but actually surveilling, subjugating, and separating children and families.
We lean into that work. That's one body of work that we lean into is child welfare, juvenile justice, and other public policies work around economic justice and health justice. We've created what we consider our north star. This is in the 45 years we launched a new strategic plan. And our north star keeps us grounded in our history as a social justice organization. And that north star has three interconnected dimensions of health, justice, economic justice, and family autonomy with racial justice as a common through line in all that we do.
When I go back and think about my mother and my parents in my years of the inequalities in health and economics that my family experienced. When I think about when I went to Langston University in Oklahoma from Detroit. And I'm down in Stillwater at Oklahoma State University, and the first time I see this big picture in the middle of a barbershop on the strip in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and it's a picture of the Ku Klux Klan. I hadn't seen that. I'm from the east side of Detroit, I hadn't seen what a picture of a Klan looked like in the barbershop window. I'm like, "Wow, am I actually seeing this in 1983, front and center?"
Fast-forward, here we are 41 years later, and it's common now to see Nazi signs and Klan pictures all over our country. We've become full circle almost. Yet I decided at CSSP that we're going to stand in this time and in this moment against injustices in the areas of health justice, economic justice, and making sure that families have what they need.
Carrie Fox:
The hard reality of your mission, Leonard, is as you said, you were really founded on a group of people who said, "We can't watch economic injustice happen around us." And they took the action, they started the initiative. And the unfortunate reality of history is that it repeats itself over and over again, and that there are ebbs and flows of the types of injustice that we see. And yet, here we are at what feels like a height of injustice, particularly toward the young people and families that you seek to support. What keeps you focused and optimistic on the possibilities that there is a future without this injustice? Your north star is so powerful, and yet I know it's also so hard to imagine it coming true.
Leonard Burton:
Yeah. Another story, Carrie, I was graduate assistant at the African-American Culture Center, Alsip Stat University in 1993, after leaving the military in 1991. And my mentor, Dr. AJ Stovall and Dr. James Mock, took me to South Africa for eight weeks. A group of us went to South Africa for eight weeks. And we studied under Molapatene, and I'm looking at his book on my shelf now. Molapatene Collins Ramusi. Collins Ramusi was a lawyer and he was a close friend of Nelson Mandela. And we are in his village, and I'm living in this house these eight weeks. I'm living in Collins Ramusi's house for eight weeks.
And then there is a protest in the village of Batawawa, near Petersburg, in the northern Transvaal of South Africa. And there's a protest of students who they say we're not going to school because they have all these Bantu education in the bad books, old books, outdated books. But yet, these children in South Africa during apartheid still had to pay a fee. They said, "We're not paying anymore. We're not paying for these books." And they protested. These are children, and this is in the village.
The village chief calls a community meeting. And it's hot, this is in July. And we're sitting around, and I'm standing next to Collins Ramusi. And we're out there for hours, and people come up. The chief is sitting up on a stage out in the community, and then his advisors are sitting next to him in this little village. And people come up one at a time and they would make a statement. I asked Collins Ramusi, I said, "Mr. Ramusi, how long is this going to go on?" And he says, "It will go on until the sun goes up, the sun goes down, the sun comes up, sun goes down again. It will go on until the voice of the people is heard." And once the chief hears the consensus voice of the people, then the chief will stand up and speak and make this declaration of the decision that he's made for the community.
And he says, "This is what democracy looks like. It is having the voice of the people being live. And that someone listens to the voices of the people, and that the people have a right to redress their grievances by the person in the highest seat that controls their community." When I see that, when I witnessed that in South Africa during apartheid, and it's the same time we're sitting in a soccer stadium and helicopters are coming over and dropping tear gas on us while we're in the soccer stadium. This is the same time when I'm seeing soldiers perched on army tanks with 50 cal machine guns in South Africa during apartheid. But I was fortunate also on that trip to sit in the space with Nelson Mandela for 90 minutes. And hear Nelson, who was at that point appointed as the president of the University of the North in Savinga, South Africa.
It's my mentors who exposed me to people like Collins Ramusi and Nelson Mandela, people like Hosea Williams and Jim Bevel who didn't bow, who were unbought and unbossed. That runs through my veins, and it's part of the fabric in which I'm made out of. And I refuse in this time of day, in this society where there is an attempt to turn back all the gains that were made for people who have been left out and left behind. CSSP, I'm fortunate that I work with a group of brilliant scholars and committed people who want to see what children and families need. And want to write the policy and influence and shape public policy in a way that is just and whole and liberating.
Carrie Fox:
And this is why I have followed you for 20 years, Leonard, because I can't not listen to you and feel my whole body move to support you and the work that you do, and the mission that you have. And there are four words that you use that I have known connected to you since I met you. And recently learned are connected to the story you just shared. Forwards ever, backwards never.
Leonard Burton:
Yeah. And that is in that book, Soweto, My Love, of Collins Ramusi, he signs his book. He signs the book to me. And it says, "Forward ever, backwards never. Until the freedom of our people is worn in the land that we live in." Collins Ramusi planted that seed in me, and I live by that. Yeah, we may pause for a minute and there may be attacks that come against the righteousness and justice that people deserve, but we have to keep pressing forward. We may pause, but we're not going backwards. We're not going back.
Carrie Fox:
Right. You've already answered the next question, but I'm going to ask it anyway, because I'm going to have you reinforce a point you were making right now which feels so essential for people to hear. I am watching, and I know you are too, so many leaders, nonprofit leaders, foundation leaders across the country. Really, we're focused here on the US for this conversation. Who are preemptively changing their path, changing their direction, pulling back on their commitments, trying to be mindful of how much exposure they have for their organization and their work. And I understand that. I'm not here judging or blaming anything. Everyone has different pathways. But you are not. You are very clearly saying, this is what we set out to do, this is what we will keep doing.
Leonard Burton:
Yeah. I'm not made to operate in fear. And I'm fortunate to have a team of people with me. When I was selected to be president and CEO of the Center for the Study of Social Policy, I told the folks, the board who were making the selection, and the staff, that I'm going to hold steady to the values and mission of our organization. Some tactics and strategies may change, but our values will always remain the same. We won't vacillate, we won't move away from our values. We're not going to shrink.
And in fact, I would submit to you, Carrie, that over the last 15 or 20 years, in order to get consensus, people have sometimes given up. Ceded too much ground on justice just so that you can get what is considered an incremental change. Incrementalism is okay in some instances. But when you look now that we've really ceded ground and allow the voices of a few to now become a popular voice, there has to be a vanguard in the community, in the space in which we operate that says, "We're not going back. We're going to keep pressing forward."
And when we get through this storm, because it's just a storm. Storms pass over or you drive through storms. It's just a storm. It's just a moment. And we have to keep pressing forward, keep going through. Don't go backwards. Don't allow people to take you backwards. Don't shrink in order to make other people feel like their growth is the most important, or don't dim your light so that other people can feel like they're shining.
We have to keep our light on, because there are people who are really living in darkness that are looking for a Center for the Study of Social Policy and other organizations and leaders that are going to say, "We're still here. We're going to keep the lights on, and we're going to do what we need to do in this moment in time, because we really believe that you should have the ability to determine for yourself and your families what your needs are. That you should have the health that you believe that you need. That you should be able to choose whether or not you want to have children, and how many children you want to have. That you should be able to have a livable wage and a parent doesn't have to work three jobs just to pay their rent."
And then when school systems say, "Well, parents aren't showing up at parent-teacher conference." Well, maybe because mama has to work three jobs in order to make ends meet and making some choices. We have to help push public policies and ideas. And our mantra, our tagline at CSSP is "translating ideas into action". We're idea generating organization, but we're action oriented.
Carrie Fox:
What I hear you saying, is not only are you keeping the lights on, but you're going to throw a few extra lights on in the process. You're going to light it up. You're going to put the porch light on. You're going to do everything you need to do to let folks know that you're here, and that you'll be here for each other. Because I think that's a really important piece. And I'm going to bring in the words of my colleague, Mae Robinson. I was reading something she wrote earlier today, and she said, "DEI isn't dying because it doesn't work. It's under fire because it does." What good does it do for us to shrink back?
Leonard Burton:
Yeah. Now isn't the time to shrink. And I get it, to your point, Carrie. Some people are trying to keep the lights on in different ways.
Carrie Fox:
Right.
Leonard Burton:
Whether it is from TVA. Our power comes from a power grid, or we have to light some candles, we're going to find a way.
Carrie Fox:
Right. The goal doesn't have to change. How you get there... Maybe it will. How you get there, maybe, but the goal doesn't have to change.
Leonard Burton:
Yeah, absolutely.
Carrie Fox:
we're coming to the end of this conversation. I want to ask you one more question on that, and then we'll wrap up with something that's making you feel really optimistic and hopeful right now. And it's, what would you say? What words of advice and wisdom do you have for the leaders who are feeling under pressure right now to pull back, to preemptively change, to shift direction? What would you say to them?
Leonard Burton:
I'm an ordained minister too. And coming from the Judeo-Christian tradition, there's a call to action that encourages people to be humble and just. And it's in the sacred scripture of Micah 6:8. And it says that you should do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before your God. I just challenge people to just do justice. It's just for people to be able to feed their families. It's just for people to be able to have healthcare. Not just health insurance, but healthcare so that they don't die of diseases that we have cures for. Do justice when families want to say, this is where I want to live and how I want to live, and who I want to live with. Don't shrink away from that.
Because as we hold on to justice, that's the hope that we have. And my hope is that as a community of social advocates and activists, and people who care about humanity, that we're going to love our neighbor as we love ourself. And if you love yourself, you should want what's best for the people and the communities around you. Not just the people that look like you. Not just the people in the same economic strata that you're in, but look at what's good for all people. Then that gives the hope. It's not this isolation that we're trying to move into, but we're creating this open and wide circle where we can love one another as the creator has loved us.
Carrie Fox:
It's the pure simplicity of humanity, really, is what you are doing of looking out for one another. And this is the other thing I love about your north star, and you've just started to touch on it, that it is the most practical way that I've seen in a long time of people talking about social justice, racial justice. Unfortunately, I think a lot of folks get lost in what those phrases actually mean. And when I look at your north star, plain and simply, every family should have the resources they need. Yes, that's economic justice. Every family should have opportunities for good health. Yes, that's health justice. Every family should have the rights and resources to make decisions for themselves, of course they should. That's family autonomy. And of course racial justice is the through line to all of that.
Leonard, as you have always done, thank you for being this remarkable guide. The north star to me, but also inviting us in to be part of this north star that you and the CSSP team have created. I feel so honored, Leonard, to be able to work with you and move that forward. And thank you for sharing that with us.
Leonard Burton:
No, thank you so much, Carrie. Thank you for riding with me for a long time. And we're in this work together, and I really appreciate your wise council and the support of Mission Partners. Thank you so much.
Carrie Fox:
Of course. All right, last thought. What's given you optimism or hope, as we wrap up?
Leonard Burton:
What's given me optimism and hope are there are people like me and CSSP who see a brighter future for our society, a brighter future for our children. Despite what's going on around us, we're going to keep on pushing, we're going to keep moving forward. And we're going to build this type of society and reimagine what the possibilities are. We're going to reimagine the society of goodness and hope, and we're not going to look into the despair that we see around us right now.
Carrie Fox:
I love that. I love that. And you can't see a brighter future without the lights on. Keep your lights on, maybe turn them up a little bit. That'll be the lesson we take away from today.
Leonard Burton:
Thank you so much, Carrie.
Carrie Fox:
Thanks, Leonard.
And that wraps this episode of Mission Forward. Hey, if you heard something today sticking with you, or you know someone who could benefit from this conversation, pass it along. And let me know that shows like this one are benefiting you along your path to navigating conflict by leaving a rating or a review on the podcast platform where you're listening right now. It makes all the difference and helps us get this content into the ears of people who need it. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you on the next episode of Mission Forward.
