Quarter Four 2020
Bush Institute Briefing
Through our three Impact Centers — Domestic Excellence, Global Leadership, and our Engagement Agenda — we focus on developing leaders, advancing policy, and taking action to solve today's most pressing challenges.

 

In a year that put a hold on all of our best-laid plans, my colleagues at the Bush Institute rose to the challenge and continued to put out smart, well-reasoned, and much-needed policy and programming. We stayed true to the values that guide us and our work — a commitment to freedom, opportunity, accountability, and compassion.

And, like all of you, we moved our in-person meetings to Zoom and adapted our schedules to meet the needs of a workforce that was suddenly hit with additional responsibilities like virtual school and caregiving. We remained committed to our goals and connected to each other. That is why I am especially proud to send this quarter’s Bush Institute Briefing to you.

Read the full report from Bush Institute Executive Director Holly Kuzmich

 

Policy In Focus — 4th quarter 2020 

 

A Continued Focus on Women

Mrs. Laura Bush and Mrs. Rula Ghani, First Lady of Afghanistan, participated in an Atlantic Council “FrontPage” program discussing Afghanistan’s security, ongoing peace talks, and their commitment to ensuring women’s rights remain in Afghanistan.

In addition, Natalie Gonnella-Platts, Director of the Women’s Initiative, and Crystal Cazier, Senior Program Manager of the Global Health Initiative, published joint work discussing issues in Africa. Their work includes a new in-depth policy report, The Key to Africa’s Future is Female, that examines the status of adolescent girls and young women in sub-Saharan Africa.

Completion of our School Leadership Initiative

In 2016, the Bush Institute released the Principal Talent Management Framework, which provides recommendations on preparing, recruiting, selecting, and retaining effective principals in schools. From that report, the School Leadership Initiative recruited four school districts to participate in a three-year effort to “test out” the Framework and gather for nine convenings.

The program received high marks from all districts. Most importantly, despite unprecedented disruption to the school year, the districts achieved policy and practice change.

Go Further Reaches More Than 1 Million Women Living with HIV with First-Time Cervical Cancer Screenings

Go Further, a public-private partnership between the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the Bush Institute, UNAIDS, and Merck aims to reduce new cervical cancer cases among women living with HIV. As of December 2020, Go Further had provided over 1.5 million cervical cancer screenings, 87% of which were for women who were screened for the first time.

Bush Institute Leadership Program Participants Continue to Impact their Communities

Our leadership program participants inspire us every day with the incredible work they are doing and the profound impact they are making across the globe:

Russ Kavalhuna (Presidential Leadership Scholar, 2016), President of Henry Ford College, executed a partnership with Eastern Michigan University that provides an affordable path toward a four-year degree to frontline workers amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Marta Michelle Colon (Presidential Leadership Scholar, 2017) was selected as a L’Oreal Paris Women of Worth for her service to the community in fighting the continual opioid crisis.

Sarina Faizy (WE Lead Scholar, 2019) is continuing to work on her personal leadership project to build a women’s center in Kandahar. She bought land and has a partner for funding and design.

 

 

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