Encore.org member David Cohen, a senior fellow at Experience Corps, contributed this comment:

Choosing Will Allen, the Milwaukee urban farmer, for a MacArthur genius award gave me great pleasure.

I was part of a team at the Advocacy Institute--with key colleagues Sharvell Becton, Laura Chambers, Keiko Koizumi and Kathleen Sheekey-- that worked on the Leadership for a Changing World Program (LCW) in partnership with the Ford Foundation and the Robert Wagner School of Public Service at New York University (NYU).

Our purpose was to award through varieties of recognition, including money, social change leadership that tackled intractable social problems systemically and systematically. Our focus was to find those leaders whose leadership made a difference in people's lives but who were largely unrecognized.

Will Allen represented a perfect fit as he had an enviable track record of accomplishment and inspiration. Sharvell helped bring him to our attention. Imagine an urban farmer, a former professional basketball player, creating a basket of food from an urban setting that would help low-income families.

The Allen story is emblamatic of a larger story in our USA. (1)Social change leadership abounds all over our country. (2) You find it in people over 50 who make use of their learning, experience and judgment to foster a cooperative and collaborative style of leadership. (3) These leaders can work with younger people across generational lines, thereby adding to their leadership's strength and effectiveness.

Just as LCW had the imagination to recognize the power of urban farming to help grow and distribute food, Macarthur recognizes that innovation-- genius, if you will-- can come in older people. It represents still another reason, among many, to trumpet the innovative power of encore careers.