Hans Hageman on Raising Youth Leaders
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Hans Hageman, founder of Querencia Leadership, is restoring a sense of personal agency and life purpose to people who have never had it or who have lost it. In his conversation with Zoe Weil, he discusses:
- A childhood rooted in service: Hans grew up in East Harlem in a residential drug treatment center. He was surrounded by formerly incarcerated men and Vietnam veterans and learned early that his scholarship to an elite private school came with a responsibility to lead a life of service.
- Turning pain into purpose: As a child, Hans was abused by a doctor later identified as one of the most notorious pedophiles in the medical system, with hundreds of victims—many of whom later struggled with addiction, mental illness, or committed suicide. Hans never told his parents, but he did make a private commitment: he would grow up to be the one adult any child could trust. He describes this as a through line of his entire life’s work.
- Getting to the source—from law to education: After years as both a prosecutor and a public defender, Hans saw enough young people cycling through the justice system to understand that pulling children out of the river wasn’t enough. Someone had to go upstream. He left law to found an independent school in Harlem with only $50,000 (half from a professional gambler, half through JFK Jr.’s advocacy). The school, still operating today, opened during the height of the crack epidemic, and Hans faced death threats from the neighbors whose drug trade the school was disrupting.
- Forging antifragile youth: Hans uses the concept of“antifragility” – bouncing back stronger from adversity – as the foundation of his educational philosophy. At Goshen Secure Center, a maximum security facility for teenage boys convicted of violent crimes, he introduced mindfulness, vegetable gardening, and breathwork. He then went a step further: training these incarcerated boys to become certified breathwork coaches themselves. He believed that these young men who had been taken from their communities needed a portable, meaningful way to give back. New York State agreed, and the program is now expanding.
- Addressing youth hopelessness: Both Hans and host Zoe describe a deepening crisis of hopelessness among young people that cuts across race, class, and geography—from students in the Mississippi Delta who can’t imagine a future to Princeton students terrified about AI and their ability to make an impact. Hans argues the antidote isn’t more knowledge; it’s cultivating emotion, caring, love, joy, and community. He believes AI may, ironically, accelerate this shift by diminishing the preeminence of knowledge work and elevating heart- and hands-based work.
- Education as the upstream solution: Beyond his Harlem school, Hans founded a girls’ school in India, going door-to-door in impoverished communities to convince families that educating daughters was worth the risk (until religious fundamentalist threats forced it to close). He now leads Querencia Leadership, continuing his lifelong path of helping young people.