Editor's Note: Michelle Sidrane is the executive director of Partnership with Children and has steered its growth in serving more than 12,000 students and their families from 2,100 in 2001. Ms. Sidrane serves on the board of directors for Belleayre Conservatory and is a member of the Leadership Committee of Fleischmanns First. She is a former president and publisher of Crown Publishers and an executive vice president of Random House, Inc.

Children are often asked what they hope to be when they grow up. I always found that a perplexing question. As my interests were so varied, I wondered if I would ever decide. I entered college as a math major. I thought I might explore being a teacher. Explore and experiment is exactly what I did in my four years in college. I graduated with two degrees and neither was in math. My interest in linguistics and English literature was the underpinning of my idealistic goal – to increase literacy in the United States.

My first job, at a large and well-known publishing company, was securing permissions to reprint material in a major social studies curriculum. In short order, I moved into the selling and licensing of rights of the company’s more mainstream publications. If we were to publish a novel by an up-and-coming author, my responsibility was to place that novel with a major book club. Indirectly, I caused that author’s work to reach many more households and was doing my bit to improve literacy.

As the years passed, I became more involved with the business of publishing and eventually was appointed publisher of another major publishing firm, then publisher and president, as well as executive vice president of that corporation. We had our fair share of bestsellers as well as books that addressed important social issues of our times. It was exciting, challenging and, above all, I believe we published books that made a difference. Did we have a direct impact on literacy in this country? It is hard to say, but we brought critical issues to the forefront by publishing books that not only entertained people but made them think.

I am proud to have been publisher of Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities (Crown, 1991), which was about the inequity of education in our country. It felt good to bring important topics to the public and create a dialogue on how to improve education for inner-city youth. And it was exciting to see the book rise on bestseller lists throughout the country.

After years of watching the corporate bottom line, it was time to rekindle the ideals of my college youth and find a way to give back. As a "corporate refugee," I decided to explore the world of not-for-profits. In my yearlong, self-directed study of this sector, I met many wonderful and dedicated individuals – some, however, who seemed to have a hard time understanding why I wanted to leave the corporate world and enter the not-for-profit arena. I was surprised at how often they asked about my desire to leave the glamour of publishing. But I persevered and networked.

I launched my own consulting firm and secured several not-for-profit clients who needed someone with publishing expertise. I parachuted in and identified the challenges and provided solutions. I realized quickly that I wanted to be part of the process and that meant working full-time at an agency. As luck would have it, a recruiter approached me about an interim position as executive director for an agency that worked in schools helping at-risk children succeed. As the recruiter pointed out, here was a perfect opportunity to use my corporate business expertise and help achieve a goal close to the one I had identified so many years earlier: helping kids learn and succeed.

Today, I am the executive director of Partnership With Children, a 100-year-plus organization that began as Big Sisters, a mentoring organization. Today, through our Open Heart-Open Mind school-based program, we place teams of degreed social workers in underperforming urban schools and provide emotional and social support for students at risk of academic failure. In the seven years I have led the organization, we have grown from six sites to 26, and increased the population served by over 10,000. Our operating budget has quadrupled from $2 million to $8 million. The challenges included meeting payroll in the weeks after 9/11 to building a rainy-day fund that covers at least half of the year’s operating expenses.