HCM Reflections of 2022 & Renewed Hope for 2023
by HCM Partners Terrell Halaska Dunn + Kristin Hultquist
HCM is poised for our most impactful year ever in 2023. This is because we spent much of this year engaged in work–both internal and external–to strengthen our firm’s base and platform. Only small parts of that may have been visible to those outside the organization, but 2022 was truly a year of change, growth and evolution for us.
We never could have anticipated in January of 2020 what we would all experience, leading us to today. Collectively, we are emerging from the pandemic storm and a period of racial reckoning, working hard to forge a new path and not just go back to how things were. To us, that means that we must continue to put the health of our team-–both physical and mental—at the top of our priority list. We focused on ensuring that our organization remains fiscally strong so we can weather challenges in the future. We also strengthened existing partnerships and forged new relationships to continue to engage in meaningful work.
Over the past year, every HCM employee contributed to redefining our organizational values, a strategic framework for growth, and key performance indicators of organizational strength, including the impact we strive to accomplish through and with clients. We reaffirmed our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion both in the work we undertake and within our company culture, and we reflected on the collective impact of our client initiatives since our founding in 2008.
Most excitingly, we channeled this growth and reflection into something we’ve been working on behind the scenes for much of this year: our refreshed brand and new website! As we enter our 15th year, we wanted to redesign our website to be our virtual home—our platform of everything we stand for, believe in, and represent. We purposely placed our company values front and center and it highlights two of the most important aspects of our firm: our team of policy experts and their work on behalf of our outstanding clients.
As an organization, HCM is working to live our values of being DEI-centered, impact-driven, collaborative and evidence-based. To help us accomplish that we welcomed several new faces to HCM in 2022. On our operations team, we welcomed Januari Bradley, Director of Human Resources and Administration. In our postsecondary practice we welcomed Stephanie Murphy, Director of State Policy and Research, and Will Carroll, Director of Policy and Strategic Finance. In our K-12 practice we welcomed Kate Poteet as the team’s project administrator. And we strengthened our leadership advisory team by welcoming Dr. Joe May as a Senior Affiliate.
Many of our long-term team members transitioned into newly defined roles that expand HCM’s capacity and champions each individual’s contributions in new, exciting ways. Martha Snyder is leading our vast postsecondary portfolio of work with a strategic focus on educational transformation; Duncan Robb has expanded his leadership role as a K-12 associate principal; our longest-serving employee Jessica Hunt has transitioned to the newly developed role of Director of Organizational Improvement; and we are enjoying the extended stay of one of our recent summer fellows, Lydia Hollon, in an expanded consulting role for our K-12 team.
As we closed out the year we reflected on our successes, examined challenges, and took stock of where we were and where we are headed. HCM was at the center of two major works of public opinion research on postsecondary value, both of which are shaping our work to center learner perspectives in building affordable, accessible, equitable and responsive education that leads to personal and economic growth. Our aligned partnerships with a number of organizations tracking and leading K-12 recovery efforts has provided unprecedented research and data around pandemic learning loss nationally in our public schools, sounding the alarm that as students are suffering significant learning setbacks, urgent systemic and strategic recovery efforts and investments are needed.
These are just two of the many areas of impact that we are particularly proud to be a part of, and in which we will continue to engage as we enter 2023. With the state of American education as it is (massive learning loss, shrinking postsecondary enrollments and an unprepared workforce), it can be tempting to succumb to despair. But due to our hard work in 2022, HCM is prepared to engage in building learner-centered learning systems that offer better chances for true economic and social mobility. We remain eternally grateful for our team, our clients and our partnerships, and we look forward to continuing to work at the intersection of public policy, systems change, institutional strategy and emerging learning opportunities.