Frontline Solutions is a consulting firm that helps individuals and institutions manage change to a productive outcome. Frontline is also a venue that provides social change leaders with a support network and opportunities to engage meaningfully in the social change sector. We work in community, collaborating not just with our colleagues, clients, and the broader social change sector, but also with our families and friends.
Our quarterly newsletter, Frontline in Focus, serves as just one of the ways that Frontline invests in and stays in community with you. In this first edition, we share some reflections on what we’ve been learning about ourselves as an organization; recount our experience hosting Frontline’s inaugural class of fellows this past summer; and highlight some dynamic work in the social change sector led by one of our Frontline Affiliates, Ernesha Webb.
We hope you enjoy Frontline in Focus. Write us back and let us know what you think. We want to hear from you! Thanks for being a part of our community!
The Frontline Solutions Team
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by Marcus Littles
 Do you ever muse about what it would be like to be a kid again? Do you think back about “the glory years” of middle school, high school, or college? My mind wanders there more than I care to admit. And in my wandering I recall those early moments when I began to actively wrestle with my identities — racial identity, sexual identity — working with notions of what it means to be a young man.
At Frontline, we’re constantly having conversations about who we are as an institution and how we’re learning and growing. And sometimes it feels like the process I recall when I tried to figure out the path to adulthood. What turn do I take?
Frontline Solutions will be four years old in January 2011, and we are rapidly growing into ourselves and having conversations about the process of becoming. (I hope this awkward phase is smoother than the one I had in middle school!) As we grow and change and question, and grow and change and question some more, it is exciting — and slightly scary — to share with you what we’re learning. The following are some questions we are grappling with and some reflections about “growing up”:
- How do we deal with labels? Do we pick and embrace the ones we like or refuse to be defined? We are often asked by clients, colleagues . . . even our families, “What do you identify as your field?” Or, phrased a different way, if this were the high school cafeteria, who would you sit with? Consulting? Yes. Nonprofit? Yes. Philanthropy? Yes. Social Entrepreneurship? Yes. Frontline sees itself as a social enterprise, which at its best, is defined by its total community impact. Therefore, we want a seat at all of the tables that care about change.
- How do we balance serving clients and supporting leaders? Over the last several years Frontline has built a growing consulting practice while building a network of social change leaders. How do we demonstrate for the sector both what we do and who we are? How do we prioritize our time and resource investments between client needs and our broader social change agenda? How can we proactively be a part of professional communities so our clients’ goals directly align with our own goals for equity and justice?
- How do we discern peer pressure from friendly advice? We are committed to our professional and personal community because a strong core group of individuals and institutions has invested in Frontline and its vision. As we grow, so does our community, and vice versa. So when opportunities present themselves, how do we remain faithful to our organizational “sense of self”? All our endeavors need to align with our values and commitment to real social change
Frontline will keep learning and growing. Thanks for being an important part of our growing up! Stay tuned.
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Maybe it’s our personal memories of high school road trips and tours of distant locales, but summer seems to be the most exciting season. This year, from late May to August Frontline found summer adventure when six stellar interns from the University North Carolina-Chapel Hill occupied our offices.
 They were officially known as “the HPJ Fellows.” An outgrowth of Frontline’s leadership development work in the social change world, the Hilliard P. Jenkins Undergraduate Fellowship serves as a hands-on consulting experience for students with a passion for social justice and entrepreneurship. Participating in HPJ’s inaugural year were Ricky Hurtado, Charlie Sellew, Cameron Wardell, Sofia Wilson, Sara John, and Shruti Shah.
Frontline settled on the interns following a rigorous screening process led by Micah Gilmer, a Frontline partner and UNC’s Clinical Assistant Professor of Social Innovation. For Gilmer, the program integrates with his work advancing social innovation at the college level.
For eight jam-packed weeks, the HPJ Fellows “embedded” themselves in the field of change, working from the Frontline offices in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and Durham, North Carolina, or visiting clients and partners in other cities. The HPJ areas of focus were health policy and practice, public policy and advocacy, education reform, philanthropy, and strategic communications.
 After the HPJ program wrapped up, team members shared their best summer moments with us. Several Fellows were excited to connect with clients and affiliates on the road, including attending a community giving conference in New Orleans and meeting the Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Washington, D.C. Others enjoyed the project collaborations between staff at the Frontline offices. “I really feel our awesome inter-office communication was a true testament of us spending the necessary time to cultivate our relationships,” said Cameron Wardell, who along with Sofia Wilson teamed up with Ryan Bowers, a Frontline partner based in Philly.
Collaborating from three different locations also meant there were challenges, as the interns adapted to working independently in Frontline’s “virtual office.” “I simply had to get better at time and project management and maintain a mature enough mindset to know that people aren’t going to be babysitting me in the real world,” says Ricky Hurtado, who joined Charlie Sellew at the Brooklyn office, headed by Marcus Littles. Hurtado and the other also learned how to juggle multiple projects at a time—no easy task in the world of consulting.
The Fellows listed several takeaways from their hands-on experience. Much of the feedback suggested that it’s become a little easier to answer that daunting question, “What do I do after college?” Beyond the tangible benefits of tapping into a network of professionals and mentors, the Fellows felt intangible rewards like learning about what motivates them and gaining self-confidence. “I am not as scared anymore to fail,” says Hurtado. “I’ll definitely risk a lot more pursuing my own ventures.”
But it would be misleading to suggest that the Fellows were the only ones who benefited this summer. Frontline staff can now enjoy the fruits of a number of Fellows-led contributions: a business plan forecasting our competitive advantage, a vision for professional development, and a feasibility plan for a new venture. Says Bowers, “Whatever it was — professional development, strategic planning, operations management — the HPJ Fellows helped Frontline translate our ideas into action.”
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Whether we are building the field or providing direct services, we often depend on the talents and expertise of our affiliates. Some partners in our network reside in our communities; others, like Pretoria, South Africa-based Ernesha Webb, live in far-flung places.
 A former program director for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Webb moved to South Africa in 2007 to help expand the country’s integration of HIV/AIDS and TB care. That “on-the-ground” experience served as a natural progression into Frontline’s ongoing work for the Tides Africa Fund, which is a Tides Foundation-supported initiative to integrate family planning and HIV care in six sub-Saharan countries. She says the site visits she conducted were a lesson in how the best health organizations in Africa are stepping up with innovative practices.
Tides Africa was not Webb’s first project for Frontline. Before moving overseas, she wrote a chapter on health policy for One Voice, One Vote, a report by Frontline Solutions for the Southeast Region of the NAACP. The paper covered a number of policy reforms to improve the region’s African-American communities.
Currently, Webb is working with the South African Ministry of Health to expand its national SmartCare network, which employs a cost-effective electronic approach to record-keeping so that individuals can receive better, more comprehensive healthcare.
Whatever health project Webb takes on, her focus remains on fostering more equity in policy and practice. “Personally, I’ve used my experience to advocate for a transformation in how we deliver services, how we treat people, how we honor everyone’s humanity,” she says.
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