Northwestern Mutual’s Steve Radke Speaks on Investing in Literacy

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Photo by Tom Jenz

Steve Radke

Steve Radke, president of the Northwestern Mutual Foundation, talks with local school and community leaders.

Imagine being 9 or 10 years old and sitting in a classroom, watching your classmates read while the words on the page seem to have little connection.

For too many Milwaukee children, that is their reality. The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shows that only about one in 10 fourth graders in the city reads proficiently at grade level. Behind that statistical wall stand children who may begin to lose confidence in themselves. Meanwhile, teachers struggle to help them catch up, and parents wonder if their kids are prepared to navigate the future.

But reading is more than passing fourth grade. It is the doorway to virtually everything that comes afterward, learning, confidence, high school, college, and meaningful work that leads to a life with possibilities. These statistics matter, but the children behind the statistics matter more.

That is why Northwestern Mutual Foundation is investing more than $500,000 in Milwaukee literacy programs this year, partnering with schools and community organizations to help children comprehend those words on the page.

I recently spoke with Steve Radke, Northwestern Mutual’s Foundation President, about this investment and why giving a child the gift of literacy may be one of the most important things a community can do.

I want to hear a little about your background, where you grew up, your education and how you got interested in philanthropy as a career. 

I'm a Milwaukee area native. I grew up in West Allis and went to undergrad at Marquette where I studied Political Science, and then I had a chance to intern in Washington DC. That opened my eyes to this world of working on Capitol Hill. After I graduated from Marquette, I worked four years for then Milwaukee Congressman, Jerry Kleczka. I did a whole host of things for him out in Washington DC. Through all of that work, I got to know some folks at Northwestern Mutual, and those folks took a chance on me, and 32 years later here I am. For most of my time at the company, I've been doing government relations. And then about five years ago, they asked if I'd also run the Northwestern Mutual Foundation. But I am still Vice President of Government and Community Relations for the company. 

As the President of Northwestern Mutual Foundation, what are your job responsibilities? 

As President, I find it an enlightening task because I get to support people who do great work in the community. Northwestern Mutual is a leader in a lot of ways and on a lot of different fronts. We’re helping drive positive change throughout the community including our neighborhood work where we're trying to lift up some of our most under-invested neighborhoods. A big part of that effort is in education where we're trying to make sure every child in our city has a chance to have a quality education. 

I might add that the Foundation is also a big supporter of curing childhood cancer.

Trying to find cures for childhood cancer is our national cause. That is very meaningful work as we align with Children's Wisconsin to help their drive to cure childhood cancer. 

What does the Northwestern Mutual Foundation do and what are the areas of concentration for funding? 

There is our national cause, curing childhood cancer. In our culture bucket, we also support the arts. I think those are the things that you somewhat expect a large corporation to invest in. We're trying to attract new employees to the city to make sure that they know we have art communities—the symphony, the Milwaukee Repertory Company, our museums and the Milwaukee Zoo. Another major area is education in our local neighborhoods.         

Right, let’s focus on your efforts to improve education in Milwaukee. This year Northwestern Mutual is investing more than $500,000 in the Milwaukee literacy initiative. Tell me more about that investment plan. 

In the big picture, we're investing $5.5 million dollars in education, and of that $5.5 million, a little more than a half million will be devoted to literacy-focused initiatives. This will help strengthen reading instruction and power educators to expand access to books for students. With the Milwaukee Reading Coalition, you really have to give some credit to Howard Fuller and his Collegiate Academy, Joanne Anton of Herb Kohl Philanthropies, and Greg Wesley of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation. They have highlighted the challenges around literacy in our community.

The Milwaukee Reading Coalition is a citywide group of more than 80 organizations working to help every child in Milwaukee read at grade level by the end of third grade.

There is a recent report that says only 9% of fourth graders in the Milwaukee Public Schools are at reading proficient levels.

Success in reading can strongly impact a student’s success in other subjects such as science and math. We’ve been working in that space for a while, and we're glad that there is more attention coming to the importance of literacy. Milwaukee is lagging behind in literacy, and we really need a concerted effort to change that direction 

Are these investments to be allocated only to the Milwaukee public schools, namely, the inner-city schools? 

All of our education work is focused on the schools that are serving underserved families. These are a mix of MPS, Choice schools, and Charter schools. Some of the literacy work we're doing goes through other organizations as well, for instance, the public library. And there's a new organization called Bernie's Book Bank which last year gave out over 150,000 free books. There's another group called Reach Out and Read that helps pediatricians advise families about the importance of reading and relationships, and they share books. We support a whole host of different ways beyond just schools to make sure families have books in their hands to read with their kids. 

How will these funds be specifically allocated? For example, are you giving part of the money directly to MPS to help improve reading? 

Let me back up a little. Some of our funds are going directly to organizations like the ones that I talked about, for instance, Bernie’s Book Bank and the Milwaukee Public Library. We have another part of our education giving. This is the Summer Teacher Grant program. We ask our schools to talk to their teachers and have them come up with ideas on what they would want to do over the summer to help advance learning in their schools. Then they apply for these summer grants, so the teachers can earn a little extra money over the summer while doing something that helps their school. This year we're going to provide around 85 of those grants, and we found that over a dozen were   focused on increasing student reading proficiency. While literacy is a key focus area within our education strategy, our support at our other MPS partner schools—Golda Meir, Wedgewood Middle, Reagan High and Rufus King High—is currently focused on other school-identified priorities. However, the Northwestern Mutual Foundation invests in literacy tutoring at Forest Home Avenue School through Wisconsin Reading Corps and Forward Scholars.

What are these summer programs called in terms of advancing literacy? 

We call it our Summer Teacher Grant Program. 

How do teachers apply for the Summer Teacher Grant Program?  

They apply through their schools. We have around 20 partner schools that we work with. The grants go through their school leaders at each school. Each applicant presents a proposal for a grant. The school leaders will go through and help prioritize those proposals. They might say, for instance, “Hey we think this one would be really impactful.” They share those ideas with us. From there, the Northwestern Mutual Foundation reviews the proposals and works to fund as many as possible guided by priorities and alignment to supporting stronger student outcomes.

I hope this isn’t too broad of a question, but why is literacy an investment in the city’s future workforce? 

If you cannot read, your education is really going to impaired in so many other ways. Reading is such a fundamental part of your education journey, but if you're at fourth grade level and you're still not reading, you’re going to be so far behind on all of the other things you need to learn in your education journey. So if we could accelerate that with our investments in early childhood education for preschool kids or even with school kids, then early learning of those basic literacy skills will make sure they can start reading. It's just so critical to their overall development. 

Here is another situation facing education. The recent birth rate is a problem for schools. The number of births in the US has fallen 9% in the past decade from 2015 to 2024. Milwaukee has lost 11% of its child population. Maybe you could comment. 

I had a lot of discussions with our school leaders about that issue because it's a real conundrum. I think of Mayor Johnson’s goal of trying to grow the city to one million people while we have this big trend of a shrinking city. I think part of what we need to be a successful city includes education as an important decision point when people decide where they want to live and where they want to raise a family. If we are not providing an excellent education to students, we will never grow the way we should. The school leaders need to think about certain questions: Does there need to be some contraction? Do we have too many schools? How do we make sure that the schools doing a great job keep growing? Maybe those schools that aren't doing well and meeting expectations are the ones that fall away. In some ways, this will give us an opportunity to make sure that we're putting all of our resources in the schools that are providing great outcomes for our students. 

Give me a broader context of the Northwestern Mutual philosophy.

At Northwestern Mutual, we have the luxury of being 170-year-old company, and we make very long-term commitments to our clients so we have every reason to believe we will be around 40 or 50 years from now. That’s why we're willing to invest in early childhood education and primary education, knowing that someday those children will be the future leaders of this community and our future employees. We want to always be here in Milwaukee, and we want to make sure we have a good workforce 20 years from now. We can only do that if we're making those investments today. 

For more, visit northwesternmutual-foundation.com