“I have always been a very curious person. I take nothing at face value. I want to know everything I can possibly find out about an issue or a person. As a market researcher for one of the largest and most successful advertising agencies in the country, I felt my analytical and creative skills would be used to the best of their advantage.”
Stacy Kim, 28, described her three years at the Leo Burnett advertising agency in Chicago as glamorous and fun, an opportunity to meet interesting people from all over the world. Toward the end, though, she began to feel restless, that something was missing in her life.
“It seemed like one crisis after another,” Kim said. “If a client didn’t like one word in a tagline, it was a catastrophe. But to me, it was minor. I felt in the larger scope of things these so-called problems really weren’t that important. Other people at the agency dealt with this type of stress well. I always questioned why we were getting so worked up about something, and was it necessary?”
One assignment, interviewing children about their preferences in video games, had a strong effect on her. Kim said one 9-year-old boy in particular troubled her.
“It didn’t hit me before then. This young boy could answer questions about facts, like how many video games he played every day, but he had a very hard time articulating his feelings. He could not express himself.
“I tried talking to him in every way I could think of. He felt bad. He was trying really hard, and he wanted to answer my questions. I felt a boy of this age should be able to do this and that each child’s feelings and opinions are what make him unique.
“I realized that I was selling more video games to children who already had a lot of video games and played with video games for hours and hours. The boy I was concerned about probably could have benefited more from reading a children’s book, going to a museum or going out and doing something different to learn. I did not need to sell him one more video game. There was more to life than selling video games. I had to find something meaningful to do for children, but I did not know what it would be.”
Shortly after that interview, Kim said, she started to read “The Measure of Our Success,” a book by Marian Wright Edelman. One line in the book seemed to sum up her feelings, moving her to tears.
“Edelman wrote that `Service is the rent we pay for living.’ I felt guilty that I had experienced a relatively happy childhood where education and love of learning were stressed. I had tried to get information from that little boy. I had not given him anything of worth back. But I didn’t want to give up skills that I learned in the private sector. And I didn’t want to give up everything and change the interesting things in my life.”
During her last year at Leo Burnett, Kim said, she searched for a way to help children while keeping the most interesting aspects of her ad-agency job and using the skills she had learned there.
She found her solution in an innovative, new program to train educators to help businesses and organizations set up educational child-care facilities. The Early Childhood Master’s Degree Program at the University of Pennsylvania is a joint project of the Graduate School of Education and the Wharton School of Business.
“It was a tough transition to make at first. When you go from being a worker to being a student again, it is an adjustment. In my first year student teaching was exhausting. Long hours at the advertising agency and even finals at Northwestern University didn’t compare. But I felt I was getting the unconditional love most children can give. I had thought I will teach the children this and teach them that. But I learned teachers are there to guide them, and each child learns on his own in his own way.
“What really suited me with this program is that I could get teacher’s certification in early childhood education, but at the same time I could learn about policies and administration that surround child care and education. This was a study that would involve my working at sites such as advocacy groups, day-care administration, corporate consultation firms, private nursery schools, subsidized day-care centers, Head Start programs and early intervention for the disabled.
“At first I felt discouraged and a bit overwhelmed. It was hard giving up my salary and not being able to go out and eat any time, go shopping and do things whenever I wanted. I received some scholarship monies, but I had to take out loans. Even with a master’s degree, I felt the job security would probably not be the same.
“I thought that when I first went back to school that I would probably set up day-care centers for businesses. I thought I would go and learn everything there was to know about children. But there are no clear-cut answers. There are a lot of problems and resources lacking in the child-care industry. I went through this period where I thought there is so much out there to do, what can I possibly do? And where can I start?”
She started last year as an intern at the Families and Work Institute in New York, interviewing business and community leaders from across the country to get suggestions on providing quality child care. Kim is working on her doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania.
Professor Joan Goodman, head of Penn’s Graduate School of Education and founder of the Early Childhood Master’s Program, said Kim had been an invaluable part of the program.
“Stacy can be a leader in the field,” Goodman said. “She has offered important suggestions about benefits in employment areas of child care, and her contacts in the business field and knowledge have helped us to recognize the many opportunities overlooked in the business world. She knows how to cut through the academia and present them with concise presentations that they understand. She has had a tremendous impact on our program here.”
“I came to this program thinking I was going to set up day-care centers for different businesses,” Kim said. “But when I got here, I realized there were so many problems that had to be addressed. Setting up day-care centers may not be the best solution for businesses. The first thing businesses think of is that they want to do something for their employees and set up day-care centers. One size does not fit all. The problem is that they have to look at who their employees are, different workers’ particular needs, their tasks and jobs and the environment they work in. Businesses can offer more flexible schedules, work hours and benefits.
“Businesses don’t have to do these things out of the goodness of their heart. They are there to make a profit. By paying attention to quality child care and child development, they can raise their profitability. It is good for their public relations. It is good for the current work force and reduces stress and turnover, and it helps with recruitment. There are a lot of benefits businesses can gain, and if they do it right, they can help other people too.
“We need more people who speak the language of both the child-care industry and the business community. If a person didn’t want to teach, they could handle public relations of publicity for a child-care awareness campaign. Business and the child-care industry are really very disparate fields and don’t understand what goes on with each other. We need more people to bridge the gap.
“I want to be the kind of person who supplies the kind of research that helps make decisions. I have to be part of the problem-solving in any job that I do. I really consider myself a child advocate of sorts. You have to in this field. But I don’t want to be locked into any specific category or box.”
It has always been this way for Kim.
“Being Korean and living in Korea and the United States has made me assimilate both cultures. I feel I am not totally Korean or totally American. I am not quite an education person or a business person either. I am a bit of both really.”
But there’s nothing halfway about the fulfillment she gets from working with children, Kim said.
“If you give a lot of yourself to children, I have found out that you get a lot back yourself. I would like to think that by the time I have children, some of the issues facing childhood education, care and development will be worked out. Maybe that is why I am working so hard.”
