Meet the Founders

A Partnership Focused on Creating Capable Citizens for the Future

Elane V. Scott’s early career in advertising focused on how to drive human behavior and choice around consumer products. She learned how brain research was used to target personal product decision-making. Using the same tools, she chose to change her focus to helping parents and community professionals understand how they could shape and positively impact the people in their lives. She has worked in nearly every economic sector and played a key role in creating global workforce strategies in STEM. She continues to help ensure the success of children and families.

Rick Stephens retired from the Boeing Company after a 33-year career in finance, engineering, and general management, and concluding as the global leader of Human Resources and Administration. His focus has been on leadership and managing complex business and technical challenges, including those related to Boeing’s Space Shuttle and Homeland Security businesses. He has spoken to thousands around the globe on workforce development, was inducted in the National Management Association Hall of Fame, supported three U.S. Cabinet Secretaries, has testified before Congress, and served on the U.S. President’s Council for Tribal Colleges.

Elane and Rick aligned and integrated their diverse backgrounds and perspectives to create Birth2Work and the Leading Your Child to Success course, with a focus on helping parents and grandparents grasp the lifetime significance of leading their family roles – from raising children to that of leading their families toward successful futures. They are the proud and highly engaged grandparents of 11 grandchildren. 

A Strong History

Birth2Work co-founders Elane V. Scott and Rick Stephens began working on issues of education and future workforce development in the late 1990s with their initial focus on developing a capable workforce. Elane’s life work has been dedicated to the study of building capable, successful people drawing on her vast collection of experiences in academia, marketing, media, community service, parenting, and technology. Rick’s background, meanwhile, focused on business, leadership, and complex systems. Together, they hosted workshops and engaged in conferences in the US and around the globe, all focused on helping ensure the future workforce was ready to meet the needs of employers and communities. They wrote, Developing a Capable Workforce for the Future: The Birth to Work Pipeline, a whitepaper aimed at laying out the key issues, seven strategies, and four specific actions for leaders to follow. In 2006, they published their first book, The System: Igniting the Soul of Commerce, which has been updated and reprinted twice. This provocative novel uses a fictional business and community to highlight real-world issues about the challenges leaders face in ensuring they have the talent they need for the future.

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The  family has served a vital role in the development of civilization over the centuries as the fundamental unifying structure for people…a source of strength and joy.”

In 2013 Elane and Rick shifted the emphasis of Birth2Work toward greater focus on families and parents.  From the time a child is born, parents have the most impact on the values, beliefs, and capabilities of their children. It was this perspective that lead them to focus on supporting parents with knowledge, insight, and coaching and lead them to create and deliver the course, Leading Your Child to Success.  It’s been delivered in many classrooms and now available online so that parents and grandparents can take the course on their time schedule.  

Who We’ve Worked With

  • Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential
  • MasterCard
  • NASA
  • Los Angeles County Office of Education
  • Orange County Business Council
  • Lego
  • Ronald McDonald House
  • Taco Bell
  • Ernst & Young
  • Children First
  • The Boeing Company
  • America’s Promise
  • Digital Promise
  • Advance Illinois
  • Vermillion Advantage
  • Greater Waco Community
  • Association of Community Colleges
  • Aviation Week
  • International Economic Development Council
  • STEM Education Coalition
  • American Indian Science and Engineering Society
  • American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
  • White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Natives
  • Riverside County Department of Education
  • American Academy of Pediatrics
  •  Primanti Montessori School
  • J Paul Getty Foundation
  • National Endowment for the Arts
  • Business Higher Education Forum
  • Evergreen Community College
  • University of Lille, France
  • United Arab Emirates Higher Education Forum
  • Anne Arundel Public School System

Publications

  • Accelerating STEM Capacity: A Complex Adaptive System, 2013, Rick Stephens and Mike Richey
  • A Business View of Education, 2013, Rick Stephens and Mike Richey
  • The System: Igniting the Soul of Commerce, 3rd Edition, 2009, Elane V. Scott and Rick Stephens
  • Ensuring Workforce Skills of the Future, 2004, Elane V. Scott and Rick Stephens
  • Family Wisdom, 1997, Glenn Knape and Elane V. Scott
  • The Cocooning Handbook, 1983, April Heath Pastis and Elane V. Scott

Interviews

  • CNN, Wall Street Journal, The Armstrong Williams Show, and other television and radio programs.