Partner Highlight: Joel Newman
In this continuing series, we are highlighting Partners and the skills they bring to the SVP Portland Partnership.
Joel Newman, who joined the Partnership in October, was born and raised in Columbus Ohio. He went all the way across town to The Ohio State University to get a BA in Religious Studies and, later, a Master’s in Business Administration. Tired of cold winters, after grad school Joel headed to Los Angeles to look for work. There he began working with the Australian Government, helping Aussie businesses reduce the time, cost, and risk of growing their business into the United States. For almost a decade, he worked with numerous companies across the food & beverage, finance, and arts industries, before beginning to pine for a big change.
After exiting the Trade Commission, Joel went on a 3-month road trip around America, visiting cities, friends, family, and national parks. Portland was his favorite city, so he decided to move there. When he found out about an opportunity to positively impact young children through soccer, he hung up his suit for a coach’s warm ups and began Soccer Shots, a program offering fun, non competitive soccer skills classes to children ages 2-8.
As Soccer Shots began to succeed, Joel began to poke his head out looking for other ways to serve. He found a local nonprofit, Active Children Portland, which delivers free soccer programming to underserved youth, and he joined their board. Joel also met the love of his life, Alice. They now live in SE Portland, with their growing family. When Joel isn’t trying to keep up with his 2-year-old daughter or attending a Soccer Shots meeting, he’s reading, listening to music, imagining comedy routines that will never be staged, and looking for tasty treats around town.
Q: Why did you join SVP as a Partner?
A: Alignment. I like to be as efficient as possible. SVP ticks a bunch of my boxes all at once. SVP is on a mission to ensure all children have access to quality preschool, and I’m passionate about impacting young children. For me, it’s not just because they tug at my heart strings, but because I think it’s the wisest time to invest in them. The ROI is simply at its highest, in my opinion. Admittedly, they also tug at my heartstrings.
In the past, I have volunteered and I have donated money, but I haven’t found a place where I really did both together. Nor have I found a lot of places where your volunteer work is using what I think of as higher level business or life experiences, as opposed to what my father might call “grunt work”. Honestly, there is nothing wrong with grunt work and I strangely like some of that too, but I also like the idea of using my Master’s degree and the experiences I have as a consultant and small business owner.
Finally, SVP ticks a sort of networking and connection box. I don’t know a ton of other folks who both want to “give” and “do” to ensure every child gets access to preschool, but I’d like to.
Q: Why do you feel excited about making a significant investment in SVP?
A: I already talked about how our mission aligns with my own sort of life mission, which is to make the world better by investing in the future. However, many firms and nonprofits operate in this space. What ultimately clinched it for me was the ROI of SVP’s venture philanthropy model. The Partnership isn’t wasting time or money -- it is combining the two for multiplicative effect. For what we all put in, a great deal more impact is resulting. For my time, for my money, I want the same thing.