Colin Powell School
Cultivating Leaders: Bobby Derival’s Impact at the Colin Powell School
Bobby Derival, Executive Director of the MPA Program at the Colin Powell School, is passionate about creating positive social change through education and mentorship.
Derival’s background as a public health practitioner and entrepreneur brings a unique perspective to the MPA Program, emphasizing the importance of leadership development and challenging the status quo for a more equitable society.
What strategies do you employ for student recruitment and admissions in the MPA program, and how do you ensure a diverse and talented student body?
The Colin Powell School MPA Program looks at each masters candidate holistically — which means that we take the “whole person” into account. In addition to considering academic performance and achievement, our admission committee reviews candidates’ professional experience, their commitment to civic engagement and public service, as well their demonstrated ability to think critically about the challenges in their lives or within their community.
The MPA Program is rigorous and amounts to a major time commitment, something we tell all candidates up front. In an effort to ensure a diverse and talented student body, we’ve adapted our graduate program to better support working professionals, especially those from backgrounds underrepresented in public service leadership and management. We provide academic and professional coaching to each student who enters the program, we have a part time option, and we continue to explore different learning modalities through hybrid and virtual programming. The Colin Powell School MPA model is responsive to student needs and ensures multiple touch-points with students to ensure that MPAs can align their graduate school experience with their career aspirations and development.
Can you share more about your experiences as a public health practitioner and entrepreneur and how they contribute to your role in the MPA program?
Prior to this role, I worked in the NYC healthcare service delivery sector as the Chief Executive Officer for a minority women-owned home care agency. Working in the private sector, particularly in the entrepreneurial world of small business, taught me valuable lessons on how to maximize limited resources, how to leverage a diverse range of stakeholders, and how to meet both the people you serve and those you employ “where they are”. Even as a trained public health practitioner, I did not feel immediately prepared to navigate the real world dynamics of financial pressures competing with the programmatic priorities of serving a medically vulnerable population. Yet, as is often the case in life, baptism by fire is the best teacher. I tell my students all the time — it's OK to struggle, in fact, adversity is a gift that trains you for the next challenge that you’re bound to face in life.
When I became MPA Program Director, I brought with me a deep commitment to challenging the status quo — always in service to advancing a more equitable society. In addition, my experiences in healthcare and business forged my dedication to leadership development, something that I viewed as sorely lacking in the many sectors that affected people’s everyday lives and wellbeing.
Can you say a bit about what brought you to CCNY and the Colin Powell School? How does CCNY differ from other colleges or universities you’ve been associated with?
Surprisingly, my first interaction with CCNY was by chance (though I do not believe in coincidences!). I was offered an opportunity to visit the MPA program’s Leadership class in Fall 2018. What I witnessed changed my life in profound ways. I recognized, almost immediately, that developing leaders through educational programming was a career pathway I had never considered, but that really appealed to me. I also realized that CCNY, and the Colin Powell School in particular, was the most unique place to cultivate that mission. Up until that point, most of my experiences with academia had been with private colleges and universities. On CUNY’s Harlem campus, however, something different is happening. The authenticity of diverse perspectives and experiences found at this institution energized me, and I quickly could not see myself being anywhere else. I love working with my students — both inside and outside of the classroom. They are the leaders we need to take power and shift our systems to better serve our diverse public.
Please share something about your plans — regarding research, teaching, engagement — for the next couple of years.
As the program evolves, we see numerous opportunities to improve the quality and relevance of public service management instruction through experiential and applied learning experiences. We are particularly focused on exposing students to in-demand skills that will take their leadership and management practice to the next level. I see this as core to our mission to prepare public service professionals to shift power and transform society.
In practice, this can look like expanded course offerings and fellowships in partnership with organizations on the frontline of public service and social change. For example, we’ve partnered with the NYC Department of Housing and Preservation to embed MPA fellows in their policy and strategy team for summer internships. As a next step in our engagement, we’ve begun to develop an MPA course offering, delivered by HPD, to hone MPA skills in policy innovation and policy entrepreneurism. Deepening our partnerships will be a key programmatic focus for the next couple of years.
What do you want everyone to know about what makes the Colin Powell School special?
The Colin Powell School is a place where transformational leadership already exists — amongst our students, our faculty, and our staff. It is also a place where that leadership capacity is cultivated, nurtured, enriched and exercised in both the smallest and most profound ways. We learn so much from our community. And that ability to listen and learn allows our institution to adapt to shifting needs, meet our diverse stakeholders wherever they are, and to deliver high-quality instruction and programming. The extraordinary people of this place are exactly what makes the Colin Powell School so special.