From There to Here Craig Williams: A Clever Way to Help (Rural) Students
Craig Williams is a storyteller and youth advocate. In this episode, Craig shares a personal story that was a catalyst to cleverness, how loss led to entrepreneurialism; he discusses the consistent intersection of his past skills to uncover new opportunities, the power of story, going analog, dreaming big, and we deep dive into the relationship between communities and their schools.
Craig Williams is the Founder and Chief Engagement Officer of Journey12. Williams identifies, most notably, as a husband and father of three. He is a full-time self-described 'treehouse dad,' an advocate for kids, and an unrepentant storyteller. Williams came to his advocacy for rural public education, and a love for the children it serves, through an unlikely, circuitous route.
Williams had an epiphany that solid, story-based communication—and the buy-in it creates—between schools and the communities they serve, was the most alterable x-factor toward driving stronger student outcomes. That epiphany, piled atop more than four decades of scaling entrepreneurial startups, serving on various non-profit, community, and school boards, and wanting the best for his own children, was the genesis of Journey12.
Williams holds an MBA from Washington University in Saint Louis, though he'd be the first to tell you he prefers bootstrapping an idea out of nothing to performing regression analyses or spending his days in corporate boardrooms—something which he has staunchly avoided in his career. Today, Craig's professional focus is on helping rural public schools build more durable bridges to every taxpayer in the communities they serve, and helping the students who attend those schools find their best post-secondary outcomes.
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