Jeff Snell: Teaching Disadvantaged Boys and Girls to be Productive Members of Society

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Photo courtesy of Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee

Jeff Snell

Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee CEO Jeff Snell

What is happening with young people in early 2025? What are their challenges, values, aspirations? Are they succeeding in school, community, career preparation and the knotty decisions life forces on them? We are living in an era where technology and artificial intelligence are racing faster than human development. Influenced by peer pressure through social media, youth are becoming more confused about their places in the world.

Since 1887, Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee (BGCGM) has prepared young people to lead productive lives through self-esteem, school and learning engagement, and community volunteerism. With 50 locations in the area, BGCGM provides youth ages 4-18 with after-school and summer programming including academic support, mentorship, athletics, arts training and wholesome food. Programs include STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and organized sports leagues as well as programs for college and careers, health and wellness programs and leadership and service.

How does this successful organization function? For answers, I turned to Jeff Snell, the newly named CEO, who had once been the club’s CEO in the early 2000s. He knows the territory. Snell was raised in Appleton, Wis., one of five children. His parents also cared for foster care children. Through those years, 327 foster children filtered through his home. “I never knew who would show up at the dinner table,” he said. “These kids generally had no luggage, instead, carried black plastic bags for their belongings. That is when I first encountered children who were nursing self-doubt and lack of hope.” 

By the time Snell was in high school at Appleton East, his parents had separated, and he lived with his dad. “Those were some hard times,” he told me, “but I developed empathy and a sense of humility. Many years later in 1997, when I first walked into the Milwaukee Boys & Girls Club, I saw a 10-year old boy, head in his arms. He looked up at me sadly, and I thought, ‘I get you.’ Like me in my youth, that boy was full of insecurities and disappointments.” That experience motivated Snell to work at the Boys & Girls Clubs.

He graduated from North Central College in Minneapolis, got his master’s degree on the east coast, then worked as an aide in the U.S. Senate before returning to Wisconsin for his Ph.D. at Marquette. He embraced Jesuit teachings and went on to work in youth development.

I met Snell in his offices on Sixth Street near Downtown Milwaukee. Through a contemplative style, he speaks slowly as if his thoughts had needed gathering. I found him a man of deep empathy embossed with respect for responsibility.

Last spring when we got together, you had just started as the Interim CEO of the Boys & Girls Clubs after being a professor at UW-Madison. One of your tasks was to find a permanent CEO. That CEO ended up being you. Why did you take on this rather daunting task?

I had been the CEO of BGCGM from 1997 to 2004. When I took on the interim CEO job last year in 2024, the more I got into the job, the more I realized I loved it again. This job gives me meaning and purpose.

Just what are your responsibilities as CEO?

They fall into the social innovation and social entrepreneurship space. The primary roadmap to all the Boys & Girls Clubs around the country revolves around the architecture of social innovation, the same concept I had been teaching at UW-Madison before I took this job again. 

What is the social innovation concept as it relates to helping young people?

Social innovation supports the wellbeing of humans, and not just the profit motive. I liken it to being a social entrepreneur. I’m concerned that too many kids are going into life with a chip on their shoulders. It’s not just a teenage or racial thing. As you enter adulthood with the attitude that the odds are against me, that I won’t get a fair shake, and I hope I just get by—that is not what we are after at the Boys & Girls Clubs. Our mission involves a forward outlook, a sense of agency, resilience, and problem solving. Tackling social problems and finding sustainable solutions.

As CEO, how do you view the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee and the services it provides?

Our goal is that each youth who participates in our programs will enter adulthood as a productive and civil member of society and will make positive contributions to his or her community. We teach health, safety and wellbeing, and that can be difficult.

Is that difficulty because of young people’s exposure to social media and peer group pressure?

Yes, yes, and yes. That outside influence can affect social and emotional development. The first piece of our program is we try to get kids started as early as possible. The next piece is helping them to academic success. The third piece happens in their teens where we help them with career aspirations. This all includes character and leadership.

Who are the boys and girls that belong to the club? Where do they come from and what do they hope to get out of the experience?

We focus on the lower socioeconomic strata where the needs are greatest—the African American North Side and the Hispanic South Side. Some of our members attend programs inside Milwaukee’s schools, and others attend standalone programs in community buildings. At each of our 50 community sites, we serve anywhere from around 40 to more than 150 youth every day. Our current average daily attendance including the schools is 3,000 youth.

I read this on your website: “Every day, thousands of Milwaukee’s youth stream through our doors and participate in academic and recreational programming. We provide safety and support during critical hours of the day as well as meals, strong role models, organized athletics and access to the arts. At the Clubs, there’s a way for every kid to get involved and learn something new.” Can you give some examples of how this works for boys and girls?

We recently finished our Youth of the Year selection where kids tell their stories of coming up through the Boys & Girls Clubs. We then select a small number of them that are emblematic of our mission. Participating kids write essays and do formal presentations. The best essays revolve around refusing to be a victim of their troubled environments but rather on how they take control of their lives and change their destinies. Our Youth of the Year represents the Boys & Girls Clubs of Milwaukee. [Brandon Dike was the 2024 Youth of the Year.]

Social and emotional development is an important factor in young people’s ability to succeed in school, careers, and life. How does the club help these kids?

We often deal with trauma-informed care, the kids who come from the low socio-economic strata. Those kids are experiencing family dysfunction, low income, crime in their neighborhoods, foster care, losing a friend or relative to gun violence, and sleep problems because of noise. 

That “noise” is like the neighborhood music to many of these kids and families. Discordant music.

We focus on kids who are especially in need of social and emotional development. Kids that are constantly angry and acting out. They are in dire need of intervention. Our board of directors has connections to Froedtert Hospital and Rodgers Mental Health, who will help us with those kids in the near future. 

About 97% of our members are either Black or Hispanic. The Hispanic population in Milwaukee is exploding. We have about 32,000 members in our clubs. Out of those, we identify hundreds of young people who need intervention. We did a sample survey of our members and found that 95% of families are headed by a single mom. The most important need they identify is the three hours we give to their children every day—time to be with their friends, eat healthy food and experience love.

The urban Black family structure seems to be more extended than the traditional two parent family. Caretakers can include grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins looking after the children as much as a parent. It’s because the single mom might have to work a job, sometimes two jobs. If a child is fortunate to get a good caretaker relative, he gets a break. If not, his life can go sideways.

That is a great point. I had this very conversation with several of our board members, some of whom are Black. They agreed about the Black family structure. 

I am thinking of a few of your leadership programs. One is the Torch Club, and another is the Keystone Club. What happens in these clubs?

The goal of these clubs is to prepare late adolescents for a launch into adulthood. One thing we do is help them understand a business model, how to be an employee, and how to treat customers. One example is we will be using our parking lot for people going to the Milwaukee Bucks games at night. The car parking will be run by our kids, which will teach them how to do a business model. The kids will get to keep the money. We also have a Ready Center where we teach adolescents resume writing and college or post-secondary applications. 

As CEO, you report to the board of trustees headed by David Gay. What is the process of working with David and the board members?

The Board wants communication and high transparency, establishing BGCGM relationships across the community. But their top priority is program quality for approximately 3,200 kids who participate in our afternoon activities and summer camp. In other words, that the kids are happy and coming back. We are the largest single city Boys & Girls Club in the country, and we have one of the largest daily attendance figures. My charge is continuing to improve program quality. Currently, BGCGM is the only Milwaukee organization that has the capacity to meet all the needs of our youth today.

I noticed that Jeffrey Norman, Chief of the Milwaukee Police Department, is on your board. How do you work with police and how do they help you?

Back in August, Chief Norman sent out a compelling call to action. In the letter, Chief Norman wrote that he has never seen such disregard for civility in certain neighborhoods. Kids that seem to enjoy injecting fear to residents, for example, 11-year-olds riding in cars with stolen handguns on their way to steal another car. A kid may go from backseat rider to the shotgun seat to the driver as he progresses. Chief Norman said it is not a law enforcement problem. It is a community problem. This is a youth segment that has no understanding of a social contract on how to behave in a civil society. He wrote that all community organizations must work together. We work closely with Chief Norman.

How would a boy or girl go about joining BGCGM?

At any of our community learning center physical sites, you can ask to become a member and fill out a form. You can also volunteer on our website. We welcome kids from 4 to 18. 

For more information, visit bgcmilwaukee.org.