Paving the way for NYC High Roaders

Not working was not an option for Edwin “Ed” Baum ’81 as an undergraduate. He made $3.80 an hour as a dishwasher and short-order cook in the Willard Straight dining hall and supplemented it with higher-paying gigs as a lighting technician/operator when the Cornell Concert Commission rented out its spotlights for local events.

During academic year breaks, Baum would take his dishwashing and cooking skills back downstate to the luncheonette where he began working as a 15-year-old, and found additional temp work in local warehouses and offices.

When the National Labor Relations Board, through a program with the ILR School, offered Baum a paid semester-long and summer internship that allowed him to apply his ILR School classroom knowledge in practical ways – while still paying his bills – he was thrilled.

That experience led Baum to his career as a litigator by day and leader of community service-directed not-for-profits by night. In turn, that career – launched through a paid internship – made it possible to support daughter Claire Wallace Baum ’16 through her own Cornell journey and exploration of non-compensated internships, paving the way to her career in the digital marketing field.

Now, Baum and his wife, Holly Wallace, a New York-based wealth adviser, are helping undergraduates experience engaged learning internships by funding stipends, subsidizing housing and providing robust program support for the New York City High Road initiative.

“I desperately wanted hands-on experience in the field, but couldn’t afford to work unpaid internships. Some students are in the same position I was in 40 years ago.” – Ed Baum

“Today, the financial stress is even greater,” Baum said, explaining why he and Wallace decided to support the two-year-old New York City High Road program. Based at ILR’s Manhattan office, it offered posts this year in 15 non-profit community and government organizations that encourage students to apply their classroom learnings in practical ways.

Wallace and Baum, ILR’s 2023 Alpern Award winner, attended a few NYC High Road sessions in 2023 and were impressed by the cohesive and highly-motivated cohort of students led by Esta Bigler ’70, director of ILR’s Labor and Employment Law Program.

“I found this an engaging project to invest in for us,” Wallace said. “We enjoy the students, we enjoy Cornell. It’s a shared passion for us and a learning experience for us, too.

“It’s not just about giving back to the school. It’s also about continuing to be part of the ILR experience.”

Applying classroom learnings in practical ways, living in New York City at 92NY, meeting twice weekly as a group with alumni and experts from a span of fields to discuss topics such as artificial intelligence and human rights, building continuity between generations of ILRies, talking with people who aren’t like themselves – the NYC High Road program made great sense to Baum and Wallace.

Sampling work for eight weeks, Wallace said, “helps students know what they want to do and what they do not want to do. It can be a wake-up call.”

The New York City program, developed and directed by ILR’s Office of Engaged and Experiential Programs in partnership with the Einhorn Center for Community Engagement and modeled after the school’s Buffalo High Road program, was a natural fit for the couple who are committed to helping high school and college students flourish.

In 2014, they created the Baum-Wallace Family Scholarship to honor the family’s Cornell connections.

Named for their daughter, Claire, as well as Ed’s siblings, Howard Baum, CALS ’79, and Ellen B. Rabinowitz, CHE ’85; sister-in-law, Ellen Z. Baum, A&S ’80, and nephew, Eric Baum, A&S ’15, its mission is to fund scholarships to ILR or other Cornell colleges for New York City-area students who are part of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship.

Every summer, Baum and Wallace, active in the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, lead a day trip to Cornell to introduce the potential alma mater to dozens of students from under-resourced communities. For some teens, it’s their first time on a university campus.

Baum, a partner at Perkins Coie, and Wallace, managing director and senior financial adviser at Merrill Lynch, enjoy connecting with students and helping them find their potential career paths.

Consider High Road Fellow Riley McGuire ’27, an intern this summer at Café Joyeux. There, she helped design training programs to assist employees with intellectual or developmental disabilities build confidence and develop job skills.

McGuire’s assignments at the coffee shop included washing dishes, making coffee and bussing tables. “This hands-on experience allowed me to observe the interactions between the workers and their customers, as well as their collaboration with each other. I saw firsthand how the training programs we are developing could benefit employees, particularly those who struggled with certain tasks or hesitated to tackle them independently.”

“Working in the café reinforced my belief in its mission on a deeper level. I am determined to help others see the value of a neurodivergent workforce and support the café's goal. Contributing to the development of training programs will not only enhance the café's operations, but also help demonstrate the worth of neurodivergent employees.

“Seeing the broader impact of my work has been profoundly moving for me.”