Life is changing for Lee Friedman, who will step down as CEO of College Now Greater Cleveland at the end of 2024 after 14 years at the helm.
“I’m not done done,” explains Friedman. “I will probably look at something on a smaller scale. I will know when the time is right for me.”
Friedman’s most recent transition of her professional role has been a deliberate and careful one by choice. Her personal life has been altered
as well.
“My husband and I used to go out quite a bit, but now we stay home more now that we have our grandchildren,” says a not-complaining Friedman, who also plans a trip to Africa next year.
No one would deny Friedman a little more time for herself and her family. For four decades she has dedicated herself to education and Cleveland’s nonprofit sector, leaving each of the organizations she served significantly stronger. As someone said, watching Friedman tackle the concerns of a sometimes-struggling nonprofit was like watching that old television show “Restaurant: Impossible.” She came in, cleaned up the kitchen (so to speak) and made the place and community better and bigger.
Since 2010, Friedman and her College Now staff annually guided more than 35,000 Northeast Ohioans to navigate their postsecondary education with counseling, mentoring and scholarships. She is pleased at the increased college completion rate for the students College Now has helped. That rate has gone from the mid-50% to the lower 70%, better than the national average.
Friedman was also a driving force in bringing Say Yes to Education to Cleveland. That brought over $100 million in educational scholarships plus additional funds for health and well-being services to city students.
But before College Now, the largest comprehensive postsecondary access organization in the United States and one with a current annual budget of $40 million, Friedman was busy putting her stamp on other Cleveland area entities. She has a list of what she calls her “signature projects.”
From 1991 through 1996, Friedman was executive director of Clean-Land, Ohio, which became part of LAND Studio. Friedman notes the nonprofit undertook “a major city-wide reforestation effort when tens of thousands of trees were planted.”
“The organization had just a little budget and wasn’t in very good shape at all when I took it over,” recalls Friedman. “But Mayor Michael White was a big believer in clean and green, and he helped it grow.”
From 1996 to 2005, Friedman served as president and CEO of Downtown Cleveland Partnership (now Downtown Cleveland Inc.). She considers the organization’s contributions to the redevelopment of the Euclid Corridor and establishment of the HealthLine bus rapid transit line to have been “a heavy lift.” But the result was vital to the area’s residential and retail recovery and correlating support for Downtown. More than $1 billion in investments were realized in that area.
During Friedman’s six years at the Cleveland Leadership Center, beginning in 2005, she was instrumental in merging and organizing five like-minded organizations to create one financially stable and effective organization.
It was at the Cleveland Leadership Center when Friedman, the inaugural president and CEO, and Eddie Taylor Jr., now president and CEO of Taylor Oswald, developed a strong professional relationship.
“I was the organization’s initial board chair, and witnessed firsthand Lee’s many admirable qualities,” says Taylor. “She has a candor and optimism that accompanies her conversations. She is a civic treasure because of what she brought and delivered over the arc of her career. Lee has made a lasting generational difference for so many people, especially in enhancing a college-going culture throughout Northeast Ohio. Cleveland has demonstrated great promise as a top place to live and work for recent college graduates. Of course, you have to matriculate into college and complete the pursuit, and then the community has to compel you to want to remain in the area. Lee has been a committed leader in that respect.”
Taylor also admires Friedman’s positive outlook on life. Friedman herself said she is “not one to look at the downside of things.”
“I don’t have a lot of regrets. Nothing has been perfect, and I certainly have not been perfect,” Friedman says of her career. “But I hope people have respected me because of my really strong ethics and moral code. I am direct and transparent. I deliver what I promise when I can, and if I can’t, I’ll tell you,” says Friedman. “I’ve been fortunate to have had many mentors, male and female, who lifted me when there were almost no women in the civic or corporate world in Cleveland.”
The common thread throughout Friedman’s career and her leadership, of course, has been her recognition of the importance of education for everyone. Without education, people “cannot get out of poverty or break the cycle of poverty” and employers cannot fulfill the workplace need for skilled individuals, she says.
Education has always been important to Friedman and her family. Her grandparents were immigrants to America, one set from Austria-Hungry, the other from Russia.
“It’s the classic story of Ashkenazi Jews. My grandmother had to escape the czar. She really believed women needed to have their own ability to control their own destinies. My family got here right after World War I, and those who didn’t were killed by Hitler. It’s a common story … But they all put a high premium on education,” says Friedman, who lives in Cleveland’s Little Italy neighborhood. “My own parents were loving and encouraging, but also exacting. You needed to come home with all As. They weren’t punitive, but established a very high bar.”
Friedman and her two younger sisters all attended private colleges, which was unusual for many women at the time. (She has a bachelor’s degree from Colgate University in New York and a master’s from George Washington University in Washington, D.C.) Many families didn’t think it was important to invest in their daughters’ education, recalls Friedman. But the value of education has remained ingrained in Friedman all her life. She shares that passion and always encourages a path of learning.
Friedman “will most certainly credit her boards and teams” for much of her nonprofits’ work in Cleveland’s successes, especially in education and resulting workforce retention, says Taylor.
“But she has been the one largely responsible,” he says.
