Pursuing a North Star Through Cloudy Skies with Leonard Burton

Mission Forward with Carrie Fox · Apr 24, 2025 · 34m

Let’s begin with a middle school stage play in Detroit. The lights are dim, the demerits are high, and a boy named Leonard has just been kicked off the production. Enter Miss Liggins, a teacher with a different script. She doesn’t erase the consequences—she rewrites the role. “You’ll be our stage manager,” she says. And with that, a seed is planted: that someone’s belief in you, especially when you don’t believe in yourself, can change everything.

This is how Leonard Burton’s story begins. But it’s hardly where it ends.

This week, Carrie Fox sits down with Leonard—now President and CEO of the…