The Billion-Dollar Bet on Educational Opportunity with Tony de Nicola

What happens when a successful private-equity executive decides that one of America’s biggest challenges cannot be solved through philanthropy alone?   In this episode of Going Big!, host Kevin Gentry sits down with Tony de Nicola, Chairman of Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe and co-founder of Invest in Education, to explore his decade-long effort to expand educational opportunity for American families. Inspired by his own immigrant family’s experience and the education that changed the trajectory of his life, Tony became convinced that systemic reform was needed to help more children access the schools that best meet their needs.   Tony shares the remarkable story of building bipartisan support for education tax-credit legislation in New York, watching it fail at the final stage two years in a row, and then making the decision to take the fight to Washington. That persistence ultimately helped lead to the first federal tax-credit scholarship program in American history, projected at roughly $30 billion over 10 years and potentially capable of supporting millions of scholarships. The conversation also explores Tony’s “venture philanthropy” approach, donor engagement, leadership, risk-taking, learning from failure, and what it takes to pursue a transformational goal over many years.   For anyone interested in education, philanthropy, public policy, or pursuing meaningful change over the long term, this is a conversation worth hearing. Be sure to subscribe to Going Big! wherever you listen to podcasts, and share this episode with someone who is working to solve a problem that may be bigger than any one organization can tackle alone.   To learn more about the new federal scholarship tax credit program, visit https://scholarshiptaxcredit.org/