HEARING & LISTENING
The Hear Foundation’s new president works with police to fight crime
It’s been a whirlwind for Leon Ford and Cindy Haines of The Hear Foundation. Only a month into their new jobs at the foundation, they will meet with 180 people including board members, vendors and grantees in their first 90 days.
Ford survived five gunshot wounds from a Pittsburgh police officer during a traffic stop in 2012. He is an author, international speaker and entrepreneur focused on hope, healing, thriving and healthy relationships between residents and police.
Recently, he was appointed to Gov. Josh Shapiro’s Pennsylvania Citizen
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Law Enforcement Advisory and Review Commission and won the 2023 Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award and the 2024 Anthem Special Achievement award alongside other honorees such as Matt Damon.
Now Ford is focused on the foundation he co-founded, speaking in Pittsburgh Public Schools, working as a boxing coach and meeting with public safety officials and local communities.
As his star ascends, so does the foundation he co-founded with former Pittsburgh Police Chief Scott Schubert in June 2022.
Fledgling foundation
In their first office at the new COhatch shared work space in the South Side, sunlight pours through large windows at sidewalk level, revealing chic but spartan offices, including Ford’s.
There are just two employees at The Hear Foundation — Ford and Cindy Haines, the foundation’s first full-time president and CEO. A new operations manager starts in February while they searchfor a director of development.
Haines was among the first certified drug and addiction counselors in Ohio and taught small community groups across the country how to land grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The 67-year-old Canonsburg resident wasn’t looking for a new job.
Most recently, Haines served as executive director for eight years at Focus on Renewal, a $4.4 million, 40-person, not-for-profit organization serving the Sto-Rox community.
She was interested in The Hear Foundation before she was tapped for her new position. It is the “next logical step for change,” she said.
Haines was impressed with Hear’s unique public safety program with police and local community groups.
“That’s the next step for violent crime prevention,” she said. “These
insensitive and incendiary times require people to understand, hear, like the foundation’s name, and listen to the differences we have and to build the bridges to coexist authentically.”
She understands the diversity of communities and the importance of their voices.
Lesson of love
With Ukrainian roots, she grew up in the South Side and Mount Oliver with same-sex parents and strong ties with family and friends in ethnically diverse neighborhoods.
“I would say that that taught me the greatest lesson of love,” she said. “Obviously because I knew early on where I got my support from and who was there.”
When she was in the seventh grade, friends were getting drunk. Then the drugs came in the ninth grade.
“We were running from ‘juvey’ (juvenile detention), not wanting to get picked up.”
At an early age, Haines realized her most valuable asset was her brain.
“At that time I was a good student and very poor, and you could get scholarships.”
She earned scholarships to Mercyhurst University, where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in law enforcement and juvenile justice.
Special experience
In her first job, Haines worked with survivors of rape and incest and those incarcerated offenders at the Crime Victim Center of Erie County.
“How do you put an end to sexual violence? I realized that many of the perpetrators I was working with wereabusing drugs,” she said.
That led her to earn a master’s degree in social science administration in alcohol studies from Case Western Reserve. She became one of the first certified addiction counselors in Ohio.
Haines returned to Pittsburgh in the 1980s and worked with adjudicated delinquents, street gangs, homeless women and children, and people with mental health and addiction challenges.
She earned an executive certificate in community building from Harvard University, focusing on community organizing, contracts and race relations.
Haines developed a specialty in grant writing for HUD and shared that knowledge from Anchorage to Manhattan to small groups to tap HUD grants.
“The grant writing training really raised the bar for grass-root and faith-based organizations so they could be competitive in federal, state, local grant opportunities,” she said.
Haines’ finesse with grants and deep knowledge of violence prevention programs, addiction and public safety initiatives prepared her well for The Hear Foundation.
“My whole life is about addressing and being aligned with people who have been put ‘dahn,’ ” she said in her Pittsburgh accent. “Shut down, cut down, let down and kicked about.”
‘The thick of it’
Haines is quick to say her work is part of “we,” with Ford, who is the director of external affairs. He meets with law enforcement and community stakeholders and spreads the good word on safe communities by visiting schools and other sites.
He recently met with English teachers at Pittsburgh Public Schools to discuss his book, “An Unspeakable Hope: Brutality, Forgiveness, and Building a Better Future for My Son.”
“We’re getting into the thick of it, leading conversations with police, doing a press release with the mayor, going into schools, and mentoring youth,” he said.
The foundation funded a small nonprofit offering a seminar on dealing with trauma.
“The foundation brings so many different people together who want people to heal and thrive,” he said.
Ford feels inspired and encouraged.
“I feel encouraged that this city has really wrapped its arms around me. One of my hopes and prayers is if we could wrap our arms around every person in Pittsburgh like the cityhas done for me.”
The foundation’s recent annual budget is $1.2 million. Future projects such as more grant awards to community groups will be determined by a 40-person board along with residents, Haines said.
“This is one of the most powerful and largest boards in Pittsburgh working on violence prevention,” she said.
A national model
The Hear Foundation is nationally unique because of its unusual pairing of its founders — a police shooting victim and a police chief wanting to quell violence and develop better relations between police and residents, said Diana Bucco, board treasurer and president of the Buhl Foundation.
“That level of forgiveness and the ability to channel that toward productive outcomes inspires hope in everyone, she said.
Buhl is one of the local foundations that funds Hear.
The board is nationally unique because it’s made up of leaders, community activists and law enforcement representatives in a nonprofit leadership position wanting the same outcome — safe communities, she said.
“Under any other circumstances, they wouldn’t be sitting together,” Bucco said.
“We do believe that this will be a national model and we will leverage national dollars to make it happen.”
When Bucco talks to residents and community leaders, safety comes up as the number one issue. And police say helping people is why they became cops, she said.
“The police officers and residents in the lower income, historically Black and brown communities, want to build a different relationship anchored in healing, resilience, problem-solving and preventing crime.”
To that end, The Hear Foundation continues to offer resources and events to fill three buckets — gun violence prevention, workforce, and mental health.
Specific programs and events include a mental and behavioral summit, a “rookies and refs” program pairing young adults and police officers to officiate games together, and getting more police walking in neighborhoods to know residents andtheir safety concerns.
“Other cities are already watching,” Bucco said. “They are excited and eager to see how this goes with the goal of replicating it.”