Don Hawley spent 30 years in the business world, working in strategic planning and consulting.

A key theme in this work comes from “Where’s Waldo?” the series of children’s books that requires readers to search through extremely crowded illustrations to find Waldo in his red-and-white cap and round eyeglasses. 

“We had a metaphor for people with strategy skills that was based on Waldo,” Hawley says. “Strategy is all about finding the essence, about sorting out the important from the clutter that tries to distract you. And that fit my mental model well.”

“Then, I came to the point where I felt I had done all the things I wanted to do in the business world.”

Hawley shared more of his story last month on The 9:30 Call

Hawley wanted to contribute in different ways, so he started with Social Venture Partners Boston and with Community Action Partners, (sponsored by Harvard Business School’s Alumni Association), both of which connect business people with nonprofit organizations for pro bono consulting. 

“My first project was an organization called Raising a Reader, which spoke to me because I like little kids.” Because of his daughters’ involvement, Hawley had spent 20 years coaching girls soccer. “Through Raising a Reader, I became aware of all the brain science associated with early childhood, the work that Jack Shonkoff has pioneered at Harvard. And I met Nonie Lesaux,” a professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education who currently serves as dean, and who formerly served as chair of the board of the Department of Early Education and Care. 

“It was a wonderful first stop, because they were very connected in a way that really spoke to me. And it goes back to finding Waldo, because I had to sort through all the ways I could contribute to the not-for-profit world. That covers a lot of territory, but early childhood really stands out as being literally seminal to everything else.” 

Among Hawley’s first steps was learning as much as he could about the field and about how he could help. He met Amy O’Leary of Strategies for Children and worked with the East Boston Social Centers. 

“The executive director position can be a lonely spot because it sits between the staff and the board. And as a former CEO I could relate to executive directors and form a confidential relationship.”

Building on his business experience, Hawley also did outreach, asking organizations to give him lists of both their happiest and least happy customers, so he could learn more about organizational strengths and weaknesses. One of his findings: sometimes “happy” customers were unhappy and about to move on. 

Over time, Hawley has been glad to see early childhood issues rise in public prominence, due in part, he says, to Covid, which helped many more people understand that parents can’t go to work unless they have child care. 

Most recently, Hawley co-founded Mass ParentCorps along with partner Magda Rodriguez. This initiative “works in partnership with [community] organizations that seek to center parent leadership to advance opportunities for parent leaders across the state,” as its website notes. And Hawley says that Mass ParentCorps is “designed to be a catalyst and recognized pathway for bringing parents more prominently to the table as sources of wisdom and experience.” Partners include a number of nonprofit organizations, among them Families First, Union Capital Boston, East Boston Social Centers, Family Nurturing Center of Massachusetts, and Vital Village Network.

Hawley has also engaged in philanthropy, lending his talents to the MA Early Childhood Funder Collaborative as a Steering Committee member, and donating generously to several early childhood organizations, including Strategies for Children.

With these varied perspectives, what does Hawley see as the next vital steps for early childhood? More advocacy. 

“There has to be a public funding solution for early childhood,” Hawley says. “Jeff Liebman [Harvard economist] says if you net the benefits and cost early education needs something like nine hundred million dollars a year in additional funding for five years to address workforce wage equity, family access, and parent affordability. 

“I communicated with one of my elected representatives about investing more, and one answer I heard was, Oh, we covered what was needed and are moving on to other things. That’s this paradox: if you make some progress, people think you’ve solved the problem. But we still have a long way to go. They’re working on good things, don’t get me wrong, but getting to a billion dollars a year requires a political solution.”

Hawley would also like to see more outreach. 

“Most of the conversations that are happening involve early childhood people talking to other early childhood people, and that’s preaching to the choir. We need solutions that raise the overall level of public understanding about how important this issue is. It has to be like the old “no smoking” campaign that’s broadly based and professionally marketed. Then you’d get people stepping forward and saying I want to shepherd this. But no business person in the state at the moment that I know of is the face of early childhood. We should have Robert Kraft,” the owner of the Patriots, “or someone else everybody knows who really makes this their issue.”

Forging a public-private partnership between business and government is a start. Another advantage is that early education has bipartisan political support. And, as Hawley points out, the stakes for early childhood are high. 

“This is the social justice issue of our time, because it affects everybody, especially our littlest kids and the kids who are growing up without opportunities. It affects the next generation and the generation after that,” Hawley says.

“It gets back to root cause issues. You’re addressing the criminal justice system. You’re helping all the systems that benefit from having a stronger early childhood system. You’re giving potential to everyone, not just to families that can afford it. Just think of the benefits we’d be unleashing by doing that.

“Viewed in these terms, of course we should be spending a billion dollars a year, because it’s going to be paid back in multiples and touch nearly everything.”

For Hawley, there’s a final example of putting the “Where’s Waldo?” metaphor to work. That’s to boldly and continuously ask: “Where is the urgency for early childhood?”