Love as an Operational Strategy (with Shawn Hardnett)

In this episode, Dr. Matt Biel has a conversation with Shawn Hardness, Founder and CEO of Statesmen College Preparatory Academy for Boys in Washington, DC.

Shawn built a school that challenges everything we think we know about supporting students from high-need communities. At Statesman, 90% of students come from families engaged with public support systems, and the school serves three times the typical rate of students needing special education services. Yet these boys are thriving.

At the heart of Statesman's approach is a radical reframing: love and compassion aren't soft additions to "real" interventions. They are the intervention. This isn't about adding more services at the edges while leaving the daily lived experience of children unchanged. It's about building love and trust and relationships into the architecture of every day, protecting it in budgets and schedules with the same fierce commitment schools typically reserve for academic outcomes.