Primary Education-a testament to the power of volition, venture, and vision.

The story of Fast Company reader Ed Harris and his homegrown fast company,
Marathon Creative – fused with creativity, tragedy, risk, and accomplishment – stands
as a testament to the power of volition, venture, and vision.

by Anni Layne FastCompany

The thrill was gone. As CFO of a high-tech consulting company, Ed Harris had attained the salary,
the title, and the benefits. What he had lost along the way, however, was the passion. And he
couldn’t fake it anymore.

So in November 1998, the ambitious father of three accepted a job as operations manager for
Cognitive Concepts, an educational software-development company in Evanston. He was
promised a hands-on position building relationships with customers and with colleagues. Six
months later, Harris had grown weary and frustrated by a corporate hierarchy that squelched
nearly every change he attempted to instill.

During the summer of 1999, he sought respite and rejuvenation at The Second City, a Chicago
institution for comedy best known for alumni such as John Belushi, Chris Farley, and Mike Myers.
Harris enrolled in an improvisation night class there, and soon met classmate Russ Schoen, a
young visionary with a Master’s degree in creativity and innovation, and a day job at Blair Miller and
Associates nurturing and enhancing creative communication inside giant companies like Kraft and
DuPont. An admirer of Patch Adams’s Gesundheit Institute, Schoen planned to begin medical
school that fall at SUNY Buffalo — and pursue his dream of healing people with laughter.

Harris and Schoen connected on many levels. They traded ideas about education, creativity, and
change, and shared pipe dreams about combining their skills and Second City’s improvisational
techniques to reach and enlighten a younger audience. Together, they recognized the value of
teaching creativity, leadership, and creative problem-solving to children — thereby building a
generation of better thinkers, better innovators, and better citizens.

"Corporations demand that their employees demonstrate creative thinking and leadership skills —
soft skills that schools simply don’t focus on," Harris says. "I thought we could make a bigger
impact if we took a step back from the corporate world and worked with children to develop
interpersonal skills that promote the acceptance of diversity — diversity in thinking styles as well as
race, religion, and gender."

Harris and Schoen desperately wanted to make a difference. They just didn’t know how or where
to begin … until tragedy and inspiration struck simultaneously on July 2, 1999.

That night, Harris turned onto his suburban Evanston street shortly before 9 p.m. and found his
neighbor Ricky Byrdsong lying face down on the corner, suffering from multiple gun shot wounds.
Just minutes earlier, the former Northwestern University basketball coach and prominent black
community member had been gunned down by Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, a 21-year-old white
supremacist on a killing spree in the Chicagoland area. It was at Byrdsong’s memorial service that
Harris decided to quit his job at Cognitive Concepts and chase his dream.

"I was sitting at Ricky’s memorial, sadness all around me, and I knew I needed to make a
difference," Harris says about his decision. "I decided then to leave a really well-paying job and a
ton of stock options in order to pursue something that has barely made any money at all. I consider
myself fortunate."

Just days after the service, Harris received a phone call from Schoen: "Let’s do it. Medical school
can wait." And Marathon Creative was born.

Within months, Marathon Creative was signed on to participate in a live telecast sponsored by
AT&T and Court TV called "Opening the Door to Diversity: Voices From the Middle School." The
show, designed to provoke conversations and understanding about tolerance and diversity
following the Columbine High School massacre, featured students from four schools in the United
States. Marathon Creative was assigned the task of preparing participants from Chicago’s
Eberhart Elementary School by introducing students to the subjects at hand, provoking them to
think clearly and creatively about potential discussion topics, and helping them articulate their
feelings on national television.

The show was a roaring success. Harris and Schoen were asked to participate in more Court TV
talk shows featuring high school students. And word spread in the Chicagoland educational
community. In November 1999, Marathon Creative was asked to facilitate a leadership seminar for
students at Niles West High School — and a promising partnership was formed.

At Niles West, the Marathon Creative objective has been three-fold: To push students to recognize
their own power and ability to influence change; to train a future workforce in powerful corporate
skills like creative thinking, communication, and leadership; and to demonstrate the validity and
value of diversity and tolerance. The exercises conducted by Harris and Schoen are designed to
facilitate kinesthetic — or experiential — learning, which Schoen says captures a teenagers’
attention much better than a lecture. Included in the Marathon Creative repertoire is an activity
called "Listening," which challenges students to focus their undivided attention on a partner for
two minutes as he or she talks about a personal role model or hero. This exercise, one of
Marathon Creative’s most popular, encourages students to engage in a meaningful conversation
every day and to open their minds to the opinions and insights of students different than
themselves.

"We are seeing corporate insights about communication and tolerance being brought out ten or
fifteen years early," Schoen says. "We want students to understand that it’s OK — even beneficial
— for people to have differences and that we must respect those differences in order to succeed.
Ultimately, Marathon Creative hopes to give these students the awareness, tools, and confidence
to walk over to the other side of the cafeteria and interact with someone of a different color or
race that they otherwise would never talk to."

To date, Marathon Creative has worked with moe than 500 students at three Chicagoland middle
schools and five local high schools, and it has received overwhelmingly positive responses.
Always eager to pass out their phone numbers and email addresses at the end of every session,
Harris and Schoen correspond with students, teachers, and area counselors on a regular basis.
Together, they are working to expand the Marathon Creative initiative.

"Teachers send us letters saying their kids are exhibiting unbelievable skills and passing them on to
classmates," Harris says. "Although it’s gratifying to hear about the changes, I don’t get to see that
growth firsthand, so it’s less fulfilling. If we’re going to really make a difference, we need to focus
on a small group of students for an extended period of time. Those kids will then transfer the
knowledge to their friends, and the learning will spread like wildfire."

This summer, Harris and Schoen hope to hold an intensive two-week leadership and
communications program for students who have taken part in previous workshops. Because
Marathon Creative is not a non-profit organization, the summer program will be supported by Niles
West parents — people whom Harris and Schoen hope will become evangelists for Marathon
Creative in the fall. Ultimately, the two founders hope to expand their operation and create a
curriculum for experiential and improv-based learning that could be applied at any and every
school in the United States. In conjunction, they plan to train teachers in alternative teaching
methods such as improvisation and role playing.

"The real dream is to one day develop a new model for high school learning," Schoen says. "I love
working with students and seeing them achieve insights that make their daily experiences better. I
want to pass that on."

In the meantime, Harris and Schoen will continue to scrape up the necessary funds to keep their
dream alive — Schoen moonlighting at Blair Miller, and Harris caring for his children and doing odd
jobs for various family businesses. Financially strapped but emotionally wealthy, the Marathon
Creative founders say they are building this initiative to last and to thrive on its own merits.

"I don’t think I’ve ever been happier or more fulfilled," Harris says. "I feel like I’m creating a legacy."

http://www.fastcompany.com/feature/marathon.html