Not his life story, but his life purpose

After moving away six years ago to take a leadership position at a national organization, Leonard Brock is returning to Rochester on a four-day homecoming to promote his book, “NeighborHOOD Scholar: A Tapestry of Scholarship, Systems and Self-Actualization,” which will be published Aug. 17.

His stay will feature multiple events, including a walk through Brock’s childhood neighborhood at the site of the former Hanover Housing Projects near William Warfield Drive.

“I’m a child of Rochester, and the NeighborHOOD Scholar moniker came as a result of my lived experience, but also my educational background and my professional experiences,” he says. “What people of Rochester know is that I’m not just from the neighborhood, I’m of the neighborhood.”

After growing up in public housing in a single-mother household, Brock went on to have a 15-year career in Rochester, with leadership positions at the Community Place of Greater Rochester, the Children’s Agenda, ROC the Future, and the Rochester-Monroe Anti-Poverty Initiative. Now he serves as senior vice president for systems change and policy for CFLeads, a national network of community foundations.

His new book is a culmination of that experience and gives Brock’s insight into leadership through reflections on his own life. His tour, “NeighborHOOD Scholar: Rochester Homecoming Week,” will take place Aug. 16-19.

The Beacon spoke with Brock in advance of that tour. The conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.

ROCHESTER BEACON: Tell me about the book. What was the inspiration for it? Who are the types of people you think could resonate with it?

LEONARD BROCK: You know, I’m looking for another Leonard Brock. Because I was able to shine bright because of my academic prowess, but before that, I was always brilliant. But young Black boys are taught to hide their brilliance, or the world doesn’t recognize it. I’m here to be a signal, that directional signal.

At some point, I realized I spent my whole time chasing: chasing degrees, chasing titles. But now I’m at a point in my journey where I can tell the story because I went through periods of breaking. Being on the other side of it, I can look at it from the balcony seat and really see how every aspect of my life makes sense.

I wanted to talk about how putting the pieces together was something I continued to do. Now that I understand the pieces and I understand what led to the fragmentation and breaking, I’m just giving people the game so they don’t have to. They can avoid some of the pitfalls or some of the landmines that I actually stepped on. It’s paying it forward.

And it’s not a memoir; it’s a leadership manifesto. I’m using personal stories to give people the 20-plus years I have of leading in multiple different domains. I’m giving them a roadmap, I’m giving them a framework, and I’m providing information that they can actually use, not information that makes me look good. I don’t need the recognition at this point in life. This is an opportunity to build legacy.

So, it’s for the professional who felt like they had to reduce themselves or shrink in order to fit into the rooms that they’re performing in at a high level. It’s for professionals of color and professionals that are not of color who grew up from humble beginnings. It’s for anybody who had to get it the hard way.

ROCHESTER BEACON: You’re returning to Rochester for a four-day tour with what you’ve titled “NeighborHOOD Scholar: Rochester Homecoming Week.” Some of the events will be at significant locations from your childhood. What does it mean to return to these places?

BROCK: It’s almost like healing your inner child because the Leonard that grew up in the neighborhood, they told that boy that because he grew up in the projects or he grew up poor, that he doesn’t fit in these rooms with national leaders and billionaires.

I had to put up a facade that I shouldn’t be who I was, or I should not share the fact that I came up in those environments because it would be something that will be frowned upon. I don’t subscribe to that.

I’m coming back home to heal the inner parts of me that I had to leave behind because the institutional players at the time or those who designed my career path told me that that wasn’t going to be the route I could take in order to become the person I was. Which wasn’t true.

I’m coming to support other young Leonard Brocks who don’t have the same archetype because they see people performing the game.

They see the posturing, they see the circus, and they don’t want to be a part of it. They want to be authentic leaders, but sometimes authenticity stands in opposition to performance. They feel like they’re stuck between hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance. I want to be able to afford folks an example of a model that actually worked, you know, that I’m standing on both legs, one from the neighborhood and one as a national leader.

ROCHESTER BEACON: Young people are obviously at the front of your mind with this book and this tour. What advice or lessons are you hoping to impart on them?

BROCK: Well, I would never approach it from any prescriptive approach.

What I mean by that is, “Ask the youth.” There was a person who asked about what I thought about what’s going on (with the) Rochester curfew. And this may sound coy to a person. I said, “Ask the young person. Ask the young person that got caught up in whatever; ask them.” They’re human beings. There’s no foul play by trying to understand the psyche, the mentality, or just what they need, what they want, how they see the world, how they view it. I would approach it with scientific inquiry. 

Back when I was in Rochester, when I was working at RMAPI, I used to do this thing called sidewalk therapy. I’d be in front of a barbershop or a liquor store, just talking to people, asking questions, but I’m getting real data. People didn’t know that’s what I was doing because I would just engage with them. I would just ask a lot of questions.

Do I have an opinion about this from when I was younger? Yeah, I can give you my perspective when I was young, what went on in my head. But I’m 44. Things change. We don’t expect for institutions to be the same every five years or 10 years. So we can’t expect the mental model of a young person to be the same too.

I really get upset with some of my peers and sometimes elders when they say, “When I was young.” That’s irrelevant. I’m not saying that you can’t be able to provide some level of advisement or counsel, but to simply remove or to elude their experience, that is not fair.

ROCHESTER BEACON: So a lot of your previous work in Rochester, and now at the national level, deals with systems change. What does that work look like?

BROCK: It’s doing work that gets at the root cause that leads to permanent, sustained, real change. It takes a long time, and it’s not a work of one person. It’s a work that many people carry together collectively.

I think that is the mental model that we sometimes get wrong; it’s a different type of leadership that requires distributed leadership. It requires shared power and someone who can get everyone to understand that vision and for everyone to row in the same direction.

But it’s also about knowing you are in charge of systems change, but at the same time, that system is not going to change during your tenure. So, the goal then is for it to be building blocks or like a body of research. You build on top of what was done. You don’t compete.

When I was at ROC the Future, my part was to lay the groundwork to help shift the psyche and to challenge the political status quo at the time. It wasn’t necessarily intended for me to be the person that was going to do some of the hard science. It was more of the soft art.

Then somebody should build on that foundation, not undo anything that I was able to do because the context was very different. The leadership that I had to leverage at the time was needed to get the work to where it could be sustained over time.

So, the goal is not to remix it. It’s to just build on it. And that’s how I see systems change. When you think about academically or institutionally, it takes at least 10 to 15 years to see real systems change, that’s to put it into real perspective.

Jacob Schermerhorn is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and data journalist.

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