To Whom Much is Given Much Will Be Required

(Luke 12:48)

Written by Craig Kaminer

For years I have known Karen Kalish as a self-proclaimed serial social entrepreneur and quite visible in our community as an activist, a doer, and an outspoken advocate of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Recently I bumped into her at dinner in Clayton and we briefly discussed her history, some current projects, what she wants to do next, and we agreed to meet at her home to share coffee and stories.

Karen Kalish’s world is colorful, upbeat, hopeful, and action-oriented. She loves solving societal problems and lets nothing get in her way. In the past 30 years, she has started three successful nonprofits (Operation Understanding DC, Cultural Leadership, and HOME WORKS!) as well as a program within the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department called Books and Badges.

With her striking silver hair, handsome good looks, fiery spirit, and intensity to get things done, she isn’t like many people I know. As a former TV news reporter in Washington, D.C., and Chicago, and armed with a Master in Public Policy degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School, she doesn’t mess around. She literally speaks in perfect sound bites with no “ums, ya knows, or likes.” She has a lot on her mind, is clear in her resolve, and tells it like it is.

While she admits most people either love her or don’t love her, she seems perfectly fine with that. Now 76 years old and healthy, she knows that she will start or do something else soon. She lives by the saying, “To whom much is given much is required.” She does her work in the community with love, intention, purpose, and passion. Once she gets started there is no stopping her. She admits, “When I see something that needs doing, I grab an ally or two or three, roll up my sleeves, and get to work.”

She’s a fifth-generation Jewish American with genetic roots from Germany and Poland. She is the daughter of a patent attorney father and amateur archeologist mother and granddaughter of another patent attorney and “a grandfather in millinery.” She has been married twice, but is not currently, and says she doesn’t want to be a nurse or a purse!

The story of starting each of the nonprofits is fascinating. But Kalish warns, “Never start anything alone. It’s the weakest form of leadership. You need partners, collaborators, mentors, and coaches to be successful.” She feels strongly about nonprofits being high-performing and making an impact with data to prove it. “There are too many nonprofits that aren’t.”

Years ago, when living in Washington, D.C., she heard about a leadership program in Philadelphia for Black and Jewish kids to learn about their own and each other’s race, culture, and history. She started it in Washington, calling it Operation Understanding DC (OUDC). The students in Philly learned about the historic relationship between the two groups and planned trips to Israel and Senegal as part of the program. Karen’s goal was to build an “army of racism eradicators” and to rekindle the relationship between Blacks and Jews. “We didn’t raise enough money for the trips, and you don’t go to Israel to see what it’s like to be Jewish in America, or Senegal to understand what it’s like to be Black in America, so we put together an American trip to New York City, Atlanta, all over Alabama and Mississippi, Little Rock, and Memphis.” The trip has not changed. “I had no idea how to start, much less lead a nonprofit, and I made lots of mistakes, and it still exists today.”

For five years Kalish had been running her business -- teaching clients how to talk to the media without putting their feet in their mouths -- and OUDC needed a refresh button, so she secretly applied to the Harvard Kennedy School. She shouted her acceptance from the rooftops as she gave the nonprofit to the board and the business to her trainers and off she went. “It was like drinking from a firehose. I thought I had died and gone to heaven,” she said. ”I loved it so much I stayed a second year, full load, non-degree, just for fun. “

Back in St. Louis in 2001, she was accepted into Leadership St. Louis and signed up for a ride-along in a St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department car to see what it was like. She requested north St. Louis, Saturday night, 7 p.m. to midnight; but her night was so uneventful that she made an appointment with then-police chief Joe Mokwa to request that police go into the schools on a regular basis to read and write with students who were behind. “If Saturday night wasn’t very busy, what might Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. be like?” she wondered. Mokwa agreed that it would be good for recruits and they named the program Books & Badges. It lasted for 18 years and ended just before COVID.

In 2004, 10 years before the shooting of Michael Brown, folks in St. Louis asked Karen to start the same teen leadership program here that she started in Washington. She invited people from both communities to discuss the possibility. Fifteen people attended -- 14 Jews and one Black. Karen asked the Jews to come back two weeks later with an African American friend and they did. Everyone agreed to start what came to be called Cultural Leadership. But it’s a bit different from OUDC. It is no longer just for Blacks and Jews – who since 9/11 are no longer the two most hated groups in America. The group attracts teens who care about civil rights, social justice, and democracy and who, it is hoped, will be the next generation of civil rights activists.

A few years later she heard about teachers in Texas going to the homes of struggling students to engage their parents in their children’s education. “Too many children, especially in communities of color, are coming to school up to two years behind,” she notes. To engage their families, she started HOME WORKS! The Teacher Home Visit Program. Now, 14 years later, HOME WORKS! has been in 116 schools and trained 2,760 teachers who have made tens of thousands of home visits. “I want all students in the workforce, not the workhouse,” says Kalish. “I want our children to come to school ready to learn, stay on or above grade level, graduate on time, and go on to college or some other post-secondary institution (we need police, firefighters, plumbers, electricians, and the military) and graduate ready for a job, a career, or more education.” Kalish is a stickler for results, and more than 90% of the parents, teachers and administrators feel that HOME WORKS! works.

Karen Kalish at home. Photo by Craig Kaminer

When I asked Kalish what she plans to do next, she quickly sat up, leaned in, and said, “I don’t know yet. The Mayo Clinic says the results of my stress test were those of a 43-year-old woman which means two things -- my emphasis on health and exercise (her vacations are boot camps in California or hiking and biking trips) has paid off, and I have another chapter. What fun it will be to figure it out. With all of my energy and all the societal problems there are, I am ready to go.”

Kalish wears her principles on her sleeve and can rattle them off without even thinking about it. She calls herself a tikkun olam (meaning 'heal the world' in Hebrew) junkie. Her gratitude cup runneth over as she talks about all the things she “gets” to do, and makes clear the difference between “get to’s” and “got to’s.” And despite her great fashion sensibility and vibrant, fun home (someone once said her home looked like Benjamin Moore had thrown up in it -- she took it as a compliment!), and a small, colorful art collection, she says she gives as much as she spends. “When I spend money on myself, I donate that amount soon after. It’s called guilt-free shopping,” she said. St. Louis needs more people like Karen Kalish.

When I asked her about what excites her, makes her happy, she didn’t hesitate to list the following: friends and family, purpose, choice -- the freedom to choose how I react (she’s very positive!), gratitude, giving – money, time, random acts of kindness, curiosity, and a sense of humor. My follow-up question was, “so what’s the best joke you’ve heard lately?” She said it was inappropriate to tell in the magazine so I can just imagine.

I asked, “when you meet people who don’t do what they can to make the world a better place, what do you do? Do you get frustrated? And Kalish said “I just move on. I prefer to be with doers and activists.”

At the end of the day, “the status quo doesn’t work for me. I have to speak out whenever I see/hear injustice. Recently I went up to a counter in a store where a person of color was waiting to be helped. Yet the salesperson asked if she could help ME. So I said, “Do you not see this other person? You can help me after you help her.” We all need to do that.

Kalish said it all starts with listening -- with the intent to learn -- not to invalidate or defend. “I suggest to people who aren’t as ‘woke’ as they might be to spend time with a person of color and ask what’s it like to be Black in America? Then listen. Just listen. The ones who do it call me crying, thank me profusely for the idea, and recount all the things they didn’t know about being a person of color in America. And how would they? It’s like asking a fish about water.”