Harding grad shares experiences to help others
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As a Pan-African studies major at Kent State University, Marvin Logan Jr. learned about the concept of "Sankofa," which means "go back and fetch it."
"They drilled into us, if you take this information, if you take this knowledge and you keep it, you've not only dishonored yourself, you've dishonored your ancestors and dishonored your community," Logan said. "If I went and got this education, traveled the world working with young people and didn't bring any of this back home, I've dishonored my sharecropper grandfather and my domestic grandmother, who sacrificed everything for their 12 children to get where they've got. I dishonored my late father, who did everything for my sister and I and gave us everything we possibly could need in hopes we would go out and spread it with the world."
The 2010 Warren G. Harding High School graduate left to pursue educational and professional opportunities in Atlanta and Detroit, but he's back in the Mahoning Valley to share the knowledge he's gained in his new position as executive director of OH WOW! The Roger & Gloria Jones Children's Center for Science & Technology in Youngstown.
At one time in his life, it's a job he couldn't imagine doing. After his first mentoring program at a middle school, Logan told a friend, "I don't like kids. I'm never doing this again."
That attitude changed with a little more experience.
"As I got older, I started to see myself in the kids and it shifted my world view," he said. "Now the staff will tell you I make it a point, even though I'm only three weeks in, I make it a point to get out on the floor and interact with the students. Seeing myself in these little boys and girls is what drives me every day to do this work."
Logan's path toward a master's degree in nonprofit administration from Notre Dame -- he will submit his thesis later this month -- has been a circuitous one.
One pivotal decision was made at age 13, when the then-Harding freshman decided to go to a conference in Milwaukee with the youth organization Inspiring Minds instead of staying in town for Harding football game as a special teams player. There he met Shawn Wilson and Gavin McGuire with Usher's New Look, a program started by singer and entrepreneur Usher to teach youth the business side of sports and entertainment, instill the four pillars of leadership (education, talent, career and service) and give them the tools to create systematic and sustainable change in their communities.
In college, he had internships with corporations, where he learned a lot, but he mostly learned that wasn't the career path he wanted. Two failed attempts at master's degrees after graduating from Kent also had an unexpected way of inspiring him.
"I had a professor tell me I didn't belong in grad school," Logan said. "You take a Valley kid and tell them they can't do something, that's going to motivate them. That's really all it took for me to have that little extra bit of effort. It's 1 o'clock in the morning and I'm ready to go to sleep, but somebody said I couldn't do this, so let me put forward that little extra bit of effort.
"I think I take that with me professionally. My entire life, I've been told I couldn't be a good athlete, I couldn't graduate from high school, I couldn't graduate from college, I couldn't be a successful son, a successful husband. Those early attitudes and comments helped shape me and drive me to do the things I do now."
Logan, 29, was working with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Southeastern Michigan when the COVID-19 pandemic started, and he mostly was working from home, so he started looking at master's programs again.
"I looked at the pedigree of Mendoza College of Business, along with Notre Dame," he said. "They're churning out professionals that are helping to reshape the nonprofit industry. That's the kind of mission-driven education I would like to pursue."
OH WOW! announced in July that Executive Director Suzanne Barbati was shifting to the newly created position of director of planned giving, and the center launched a nationwide search for her replacement.
Logan was among more than 30 candidates considered for the position. He wasn't sure it was what he was looking for until he came for a visit last September -- the day after his wedding -- for OH WOW's annual Silly Science Sunday.
"I ran into one of my old teammates and his daughter at Silly Science Sunday and got to see the magic happen. 'Oh, this is what's going on here.' I felt it was a perfect fit."
Logan and his wife now live in Warren in a house that has been in his family for three generations.
He started at OH WOW! in October and said his goal is to make the center "one of the central, pivotal pieces to the development of the Valley when it comes to workforce development, education in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) fields for our young people and being able to create experiences to for those middle school students and high school-age students, giving them the opportunity to explore and experience what a potential future looks like in the different STEM fields."