Natalie Tung: Revolutionary for Better High-School Education for Girls

The Sydcast

Episode Summary

Boarding school. Enrichment and personal growth experiences. A supportive community. Natalie Tung is creating all of this … for black and brown high school girls in Trenton. The idea took shape while Natalie was at Princeton and reflected on her own experience growing up in Hong Kong. Now, just a few years later, she’s hit the tipping point. Meet the budding “Sal Kahn” for minority high-school girls.

Sydney Finkelstein

Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.

Natalie Tung

Natalie is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of HomeWorks Trenton, a free community-based after-school boarding program. Growing up in a numbers-driven public school system in Hong Kong, Natalie had an unhealthy relationship with learning. This relationship changed when she had the opportunity to attend a boarding school in New Jersey. More importantly, living with 40 girls at such a young age empowered her to become more empathetic and confident, and these women are still her support system today. While earning her teaching certificate as a sophomore at Princeton University, Natalie started HomeWorks with the idea of replicating this experience for girls in marginalized communities around the world. Since 2016, she has run five programs with 50 participants, raised over $1.9 million in cash and in-kind donations, and built a diverse team of 6 full-time and five part-time staff, board members, interns, and volunteers. Natalie and HomeWorks have been recognized by McKinsey & Company, Camelback Ventures, Barclays, Comcast, Hollister, TRESemmé, Echoing Green, Vital Voices, Penn Graduate School of Education, Princeton University, and more.

Insights from this episode:

• Details about HomeWorks Trenton program
• The problem HomeWorks Trenton is seeking to solve
• How Natalie’s school experience shaped her
• Natalie’s conviction to help women of color
• How HomeWorks Trenton program is aligned to Natalie’s mission
• Partners she has worked with to equip her scholars and make them ready for college
• Natalie’s challenges running the program
• Natalie’s aspiration for HomeWorks

Quotes from the show:

• “What we are doing here is not only replicating a boarding school and bringing it to public schools and with all the benefits of the wrap-around learning and all that, but also doing so in a way that reverses the narrative that our kids need to leave their communities to be successful.”–Natalie Tung [6:29]
• “At the core of what we are doing, we are creating a community specifically for our black and brown girls here in Trenton to reclaim power over their cultures, identities, and experiences.“ –Natalie Tung [6:41]
• “I truly believe in the power of women. I believe that when women come together and when we really are at the forefront of things, magic happens” –Natalie Tung [17:39]
• “I was in a community of women who were my age, and just being able to live with so many different kinds of girls and to be vulnerable with each other at the age of 13/14, it was such a unique experience. It did make me more confident” –Natalie Tung [18:40]
• “Our values are intentionality, empathy, and community. Something that we are trying to do is making sure that we are being intentional about every single thing we do at HomeWorks, every decision, every policy we have” –Natalie Tung [22:48]
• “We want to build a culture where our kids feel safe, where they are here to grow. We all make mistakes but we are here to learn and just feel like we have each other's backs” –Natalie Tung [23:03]
• “I very much believe in the power of women and I very much believe in the power of community, and I know a lot of other who people believe in it too” –Natalie Tung [33:24]
• “I think the beauty about HomeWorks and about our team is that we have a really diverse group of people within our staff” –Natalie Tung [43:28]

Stay connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

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Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

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Natalie Tung

LinkedIn: Natalie Tung

Instagram: Natalie Tung

HomeWorks Trenton Website: https://www.homeworkstrenton.org/

HomeWorks Trenton Brochure: https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/62642925/homeworks-trenton-pamphlet

HomeWorks Trenton Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOjhQRJT7Vg

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.