We recently connected with Alan Steinberg and have shared our conversation below.

Alan, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

A few years back I created a personal vision statement, “A society where everyone is willing and able to take initiative to improve the lives of others.” I started working with the West Houston Association about three years ago because of my alignment with the organization’s vision of a place where everyone has the opportunity for great experiences. It is worth taking a moment to rewind 40+ years to understand where WHA started. In the 1970s development in Houston was a little fast and loose. The ideal image people had of the suburbs was not the reality. Getting to the central business district involved traffic jams, schools were over-crowded, and the amenities that we think of in the suburbs, like trails and parks, were few and far between. A group of developers saw the future of Houston to the West. At the time, the area from Dairy Ashford to the City of Katy, was starting to experience dramatic growth and concurrently the onset of urban problems. The group that eventually became known as the West Houston Association, formed in May of 1977 for the purpose of identifying current and future issues and taking action to address them. It has been a continuous attempt to reconsider and restructure the previous patterns of suburban development to create and continue to grow a vibrant region relying on public/private partnerships and a coalition of business leaders willing to work together for the good of the community.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I am a passionate civic leader with the desire to improve the Houston community through education, advocacy, and civic action by connecting people who can turn challenges into opportunities. I have been a volunteer for most of my life and can remember getting my start at the nursing home my mom worked at when I was in elementary school, doing things like delivering holiday baskets and making photocopies. I continued engaging in community service throughout my school years, and was particularly fond of my Habitat For Humanity work in high school and college. I have always enjoyed learning and have had a fascination with both human behavior and public policy since college. I eventually earned my Ph.D. in Political Science focusing on social media and mass political behavior. I went on to do a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Political Science at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, TX, teaching courses on U.S. & Texas government, public policy, statistics and research design, while conducting research on social media and political engagement. At Sam Houston I also became interested in the ideas of service learning and community engagement, blending together the academic and civic spaces to benefit both student learning and the community. From there I moved back to Houston to serve as the Associate Director of Houston Programs and Partnerships within Rice University’s Center for Civic Leadership leading the Houston Action Research Teams, which are groups of undergraduate students working with local community partners to address issues facing the city and it’s residents. Coming to the West Houston Association was a natural next step. Now instead of working with student groups, I work with business leaders, industry experts, and policy makers, bringing them together to collaborate on identifying challenges facing the greater West Houston region and then taking the steps to address those challanges.

Have you ever had to pivot?

In undergrad I was a psychology major, and 9/11 happened during my sophomore year. At the time I didn’t realize how much it impacted my life and decisions. After it happened, I became very interested in terrorism. I was reading books on the subject, taking classes on international relations, picked up a master’s degree in defense studies, even worked for two years in Washington DC on homeland security and defense issues. In 2006, Tom Delay resigned his seat in Congress. I wanted to make change, I wanted to make a difference, so I dropped what I was doing and moved home at the age of 24 to run for U.S. Congress. I spent a few months on the campaign trail, not really knowing what I was doing. I just knew that I didn’t like what was going on in government and thought that I could do better. Needless to say, I was young, inexperienced, and unaware of what I didn’t know and didn’t understand about politics. I ended up dropping out of the race and going to the University of Houston for graduate studies in Political Science. For many years this is a story that I didn’t tell. I was embarrassed by the failure and feeling like I had given up, didn’t even see it through long enough to file all the paperwork. It was a heck of a combination pivot from working in DC to running for office to graduate school all within a year.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

I’m a huge reader. If you come into my office there are stacks of books on the floor, I joke that it’s because I am a “recovering academic.” A few years back I started giving them away. After I read a book, I identify someone who can gain value from it. There are about a dozen books in my office with sticky notes on them that have a person’s name, identifying who I am planning to give it to. There are not silver bullet books that are magically wonderful for everyone, instead it’s about the place people are at in their lives and the book that might help them in that moment. I just finished a book that I probably should have read earlier entitled “How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything” by Dov Seidman. The book centers on how we live our lives and run our businesses; it provides a different way of thinking about the world and is one of multiple books that I’ve enjoyed recently focusing on values.

Another I felt was particularly impactful on how I think is “Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action” by Simon Sinek. You can just watch the TED talk, “How great leaders inspire action” for the cliff-notes version. People around me likely get fed up with my “why” focus, but I do believe it is a helpful way to approach what we do.

The book I most recommend to people and that has probably had the biggest impact on my own success in the last five years is “Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High” by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler. When I was working at Rice, I knew that communication was a skill I wanted to work on. I enrolled in a course offered by the HR department that focused on this book. I’ll readily admit that I was skeptical at first and that it took a while for it to sink in. Since then, it has been very impactful on how I communicate. The lessons from the book helped me realize what I was doing that would lead to communication breakdowns and recognizing similar traits within others. I’m now much better at focusing discussions and giving others more grace in their communication.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.westhouston.org/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alansteinberg/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/alansteinberg