Jack Harris: A New Era of Leadership at JA USA
July 23, 2024
Junior Achievement USA—one of six JA regional operating centers around the world—welcomed a new CEO on July 1. Although Jack Harris just stepped into the top role, he’s not a new face in the JA network. We sat down with Jack to learn more about him and discuss his career, his JA journey, and his vision for the future.
JA Worldwide: Before JA, you worked in the financial sector. How did you first hear about JA, and what made you want to work for the organization?
Jack Harris: I moved to Atlanta directly after college and taught for a couple of years, though I had not originally intended to make education my career. After that, I worked as a financial advisor for Smith Barney, which was an interesting experience, but my interest at the time lay in international economic development and global political economy.
I planned to return to school and get a master’s in international affairs, but as I was discussing my career aspirations with friends, one of them pointed out that JA had just moved its international headquarters to Atlanta. I wasn’t familiar with Junior Achievement at the time, but I did some research and ended up spending three years working on international projects and initiatives at JA and traveling to about 30 countries. I got hooked on the mission.
JA Worldwide: You started at the global level and then moved to the state level, working as Chief Operating Officer for Junior Achievement of Georgia. What motivated that move?
Jack Harris: I wanted to understand how JA's organization worked on the ground. I wanted to take some of the lessons I had seen internationally and see how we could best position some of JA's greatest assets in the United States toward some of those deeper systemic challenges.
JA Worldwide: What are some of the things you’re most proud of from your time at JA of Georgia?
Jack Harris: I’m very proud of how we repositioned JA of Georgia and deepened relationships with school districts around the state. We became a solution provider rather than simply a district partner. We worked with superintendents and district leaders to understand the barriers and constraints they faced around education and economic mobility and how we could address them collaboratively.
Reflecting on our journey, I see numerous proofs of concept that validate our strategic shift and the depth of our partnerships. We wanted to find the most impactful way for JA as an organization to lean into some of these complex problems, and then prove that we could do that in partnership. This was the impetus for the design and creation of 3DE Schools, which positioned JA in a very different type of way than people would have thought about in the past.
JA Worldwide: After almost 14 years at JA of Georgia, you became President and CEO of 3DE Schools, JA’s venture into high school redesign. Can you talk more about that?
Jack Harris: JA of Georgia had just opened our first Discovery Center in Atlanta in 2013, a 50,000-square-foot facility downtown with JA Biztown and JA Finance Park, in partnership with four school districts.
We weren't just going to build it and hope that students would come. We wanted to foster strategic partnerships with these districts to value the experience enough that they would mandate JA as part of their curriculum from middle school, and then we went out and raised the money and developed a supporting coalition from the corporate community.
The process had gone well, and during the week of the grand opening of that facility, the superintendent of one of the lead districts we were working with called me. He acknowledged that the Discovery Center encapsulates all of the trends in effective education right now – relevant, experiential learning that is team-based, interdisciplinary, and authentically connected to the real world. All the factors that research shows will drive higher levels of student engagement. It should be team-based. It should be interdisciplinary and should be connected to the real world. It should drive student engagement.
The superintendent posed an intriguing question to us: “If we could have a blank slate to redesign high school education from the ground up, what would we do? What would be the approach?” He floated the idea of creating a JA charter school. Although the idea of a blank slate was very appealing, the idea of running a charter school wasn’t the right fit for JA of Georgia at the time. The nuts and bolts of running a school were outside of our capabilities. But if there was an opportunity to look at it differently, like working together in some form of a joint venture that takes characteristics from charter schools, puts them into existing, traditional high schools, and helps them grow innovation from inside out versus setting up something on the outside, then that would be interesting.
JA Worldwide: How will 3DE Schools change now that you’re the CEO of JA USA?
Jack Harris: I’m staying on as President and CEO of 3DE Schools in addition to serving as CEO of Junior Achievement USA. At Junior Achievement, we have a unique platform to deliver differentiated solutions within the broader education and economic mobility space. But we have to be sure that we're supporting each of our different types of product segments with specialists thinking through necessary resources and support.
The 3DE team creates a good model of what a “product team” can look like, supporting JA areas through the entire lifecycle of implementation with 3DE, and how this can then translate to other product segments within JA.
JA Worldwide: What do you bring to the role of CEO of JA USA?
Jack Harris: We’ve been operating 3DE like a startup for the last five years and so there is new insight that can be brought to the table from that experience. A lot of that was intentional to see how we might think about our organization and our go-to market strategy for the future. There are things from that journey that I can carry over and help translate regarding how we think of everything that JA does going forward.
I really believe in ensuring there's a crisp, aligned vision that everybody's working toward, which is so important because of the cross-functional nature of our work. I'm coming into this role with an understanding of JA at multiple levels.. From doing the work locally, I understand the challenges, the opportunities, the realities, and the context. There's so much strength in our network, and working on the national level, just like working on the global level, we have to be sure that we keep the local areas front and center.
JA Worldwide: OK, last question. How has JA changed your life?
Jack Harris: Because of JA, I see the world very differently. My international experience with JA opened my eyes to how many challenges and opportunities are the same abroad as they are in the US. It’s important to me to observe, recognize, and solve challenges and not be stuck in analysis. We have to act on them and bring solutions to the table.
I have a deep respect for this organization and the network, and especially the JA leaders around the world. What drives me the most is thinking about how we can create and execute innovative solutions to deep systemic challenges. We've got plenty of those we can put our energy behind, which keeps the work fulfilling.