Meet 4.0’s Meet the Moment 2.0 Grantees
In partnership with the VELA Education Fund, we’ve awarded $840,000 to 56 alumni teams working on innovative, out-of-system, student-centric opportunities in response to COVID learning disruptions.
4.0 has partnered again with the VELA Education Fund to distribute grants supporting innovative, out-of-system, student-centric opportunities in response to COVID learning disruptions through the Meet the Moment Grant Fund.
In our first round of grants in the fall of 2020, 4.0 was able to disburse almost $500,000 to 4.0 alumni working on ideas responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, we’re excited to announce that in our second round of grants, we have awarded $840,000 to 56 alumni teams.
Today, we’re proud to announce the 56 teams we’re investing in and share what they’re working on to respond to the effects of the pandemic in their communities.
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Meet 4.0’s Meet the Moment 2.0 Grantees:
Jacob Adams | California
About Jacob: Jacob is the Founder and Executive Director of STEM to the Future. Prior to founding STTF, jacob was a Teach For America teacher in New York City where he was an elementary school educator in Brooklyn and Harlem. He moved to Los Angeles to be an instructional coach at TFA. jacob has 9+ years of experience in education and is using that experience to help students be solution-oriented individuals who use their gifts to uplift the community and create the world they want and deserve. He’s a 4.0 School Essentials and Tiny Fellow, a photographer and co-host of the Make it Make Sense (MIMS) Podcast
About Their Idea: Brick by Brick programs are student-led initiatives in which youth combine justice, STEAM, and activism as they work together to reimagine and create the communities they want. They are guided through the process of (1) creating a clear vision for the world they want and deserve, (2) using STEAM to develop projects that support their vision, and (3) connecting with the community and grassroots organizations to implement the projects.Brick by Brick consists of four student led programs: Build’Em Up, Building Healthy Communities, Freedom Summer Camp, and Design Co-op.
Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Instagram
LaTasha Adams | Georgia
About LaTasha: After realizing that she had been mistracked in middle school due to the predominant race and class of her elementary school, Dr. LaTasha Jones Adams vowed to be a voice for the in the fight towards ending educational inequity. She began teaching as a Teach for America corps member with the Atlanta Public Schools. Since then she has been a middle school and elementary school principal, curriculum specialist, curriculum coordinator, educational research associate, and assistant professor. Dr. Adams is also a member of several advisory boards and professional organizations all while founding Dominion Literacy, a non-profit that focuses on educational equity and advocacy through literacy. Through her service, Dr. LaTasha Adams echoes the cries of the voiceless and continues a relentless pursuit towards her life’s mission: educational equity for all. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Curriculum and Instruction/Urban Education from The University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
About Their Idea: The Promising Parent Pods formed to support under-resourced families’ needs as a result of the Pandemic. This group initially formed to help families navigate virtual schooling. Webinars about virtual schooling to social emotional learning for children were implemented. The group pivoted to help families in ways expressed by the families. Broad topics of self-care and mental health and academic resources like tutoring were added to the program based on the stated needs of the family. The Promising Parent Pods aided families in a wholistic way. 100% of families wanted to continue the program at the program’s end.
Shaquann Braswell | New York
About Their Idea: Rising Stars Enrichment Cove is a hybrid learning platform that provides academic remediation and enrichment for students in grades K-8 in Brooklyn, New York. Additionally, Rising Stars empowers students to think critically about the world and select enrichment concentrations that speaks to who they are so they can go out into the world and effect change. At Rising Stars participants receive no cost ELA and Mathematics intervention and then select an enrichment module to participate in such as Performing Arts, STEAM, Social Justice Field Work, Journalism and the Ethics Club.
Antionette Carroll | Missouri
About Antionette: Antionette Carroll is the Founder, President and CEO of Creative Reaction Lab, a nonprofit educating and deploying youth to challenge racial and health inequities impacting Black and Latinx populations. Within this role, Antionette has pioneered an award-winning form of creative problem solving called Equity-Centered Community Design (named a Fast Company World Changing Idea Finalist). Partnering with Timothy Bardlavens, Antionette co-founded & Design — an organization whose mission is to cultivate and activate Black, Latinx, and Indigenous Designers by providing tools, resources and training to support them on their creative career journey.
About Their Idea: Redesigning Education for Racial Equity and Social Healing (REFRESH) is an intergenerational civic engagement program bringing together educators of Black and Latinx youth (and youth) to co-create classroom and community interventions for racial and health equity. Participants learn a unique youth-centered curriculum, When We Create: Building Leadership, Racial Consciousness, and Grassroots Change™, to adapt it to their learning spaces to amplify and shift power to young leaders. Educators of Black and Latinx youth to understand their roles in designing healthy and racially equitable outcomes, amplify and shift power to young leaders, and collectively shift education structures to support social healing.
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn
Anna Gabriella Casalme | California
About Anna: Anna Gabriella Casalme is dedicated to creating a world where all young people feel seen and can thrive. As the founder and CEO of Novelly, she brings expertise at the intersection of youth development, health and well-being, design thinking, and technology. She has previously worked at AltaMed Health Services, the California Planned Parenthood Education Fund, and the School-Based Health Alliance. She completed her MSc in Childhood Studies from the University of Edinburgh, where she was a Rotary Maternal and Child Health Scholar and a Saltire Scholar. She received her B.A. in Human Biology and Education from Stanford University.
About Their Idea: The Rising Voices Collective is a group of diverse teenagers from across the United States who receive mentorship from published young adult fiction authors, curriculum, and community support to publish poems and short fiction that celebrate their lived experiences and start courageous conversations around race, gender, and sexuality.
Dirrick Butler | Illinois
About Dirrick: Rooted in his own experiences as a public school student and teacher, Dirrick Butler has witnessed first-hand the inequities that exist in the urban education ecosystem, specifically for students of color. He is dedicated to radically reimagining how we educate and support boys of color in and outside the traditional school space. Dirrick is the Founder and Program Director of Project OneTen, an organization that creates a net of support for Black and Latino/x boys as they transition from 8th grade to high school. Dirrick is a graduate of Clark Atlanta University and received a Master’s in Education Policy from Loyola University Chicago. He is also an alum of the Surge Institute Fellowship program in Chicago.
About Their Idea: Project OneTen believes in the power of building and supporting young leaders during the major transition from 8th grade to high school. P110 aims to uncover and sharpen the skills, talents, and innate genius of Black and Latino/x boys and give them the tools to translate their own brilliance into successful academic and social behaviors that will result in high academic achievement in high school and success beyond.
LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter
Nailah Butler | New Jersey
About Nailah: Nailah Butler serves as Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of arts nonprofit Epitome of Soul, Inc., an organization focused on bringing arts back into schools and developing leaders through the arts. She brings several years of experience in community relations, performing arts, and business development to Epitome of Soul, in addition to contributing to philanthropic efforts in communities, both globally and domestically. Her passion for helping others permeates through her professional and personal life. She is an alumna of Syracuse University where she earned a Bachelors of Science in Marketing and Supply Chain Management. Her marketing experience extends over 10 years, working with top consumer brands, c-suite level executives and grassroots organizations.
About Their Idea: Epitome of Soul’s Virtual Arts & Soul After-school program provides an interactive arts learning solution to parents and students interested in cultivating their creative expression and growth. Students ages 7–14 participate in live and synchronous weekly arts classes in the disciplines of dance, theater, and visual arts 5 days per week. All virtual sessions focus on interactive, artistic classes utilizing the teaching model of language presentation, development, implementation and exhibition.
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn
Noelle Carson | Georgia
About Noelle: Noelle Carson is a school counselor, educator, and mental health therapist based in Atlanta, GA. Noelle has spent the past four years working as a school based therapist and the past 11 years working in mental health. Noelle is dedicated to creating equitable and accessible mental health services for people of color. In 2018, Noelle founded an idea, Inception Inc, after witnessing the disparities in trauma informed mental health in her community, specifically for Black members. After participating in 4.0 School Essentials Fellowship in 2019–2020, Noelle hopes to continue her work in providing equitable trauma informed services.
About Their Idea: Inception Ed is a non-profit school based and virtual support program, that aims to decrease academic and mental health barriers in education. Inception Ed provides trauma informed emotional based support to students of color, within schools. Our accessible programs will assist in decreasing academic learning loss and emotional dysregulation by providing equitable school based emotional and academic support, via free counseling, tutoring, and academic planning services for students in grades 4th-8th.
Victoria Chen & Victoria Doan| Texas
About Victoria Chen: Victoria Chen is a former Biology teacher who believes in the power of hands-on, experimental learning — and wants it applied to career exploration! After realizing so many students struggled to figure out what their paths could be after high school, she founded BridgeYear with her partner, Victoria Doan. Now, BridgeYear is working with students across the country and has forged employer partnerships to strengthen the pipeline from school to employment. Chen received her undergraduate degree from Brown University, her MBA from the Yale School of Management, and is a Teach For America alum.
About Victoria Doan: Victoria Doan is a former college access coordinator who received district-wide recognition for her innovative practices and processes of the “College and Career Center.” As a child of immigrants who had made a living through the trades, she is a firm believer in self-determination and economic empowerment. Through her work with BridgeYear, she is raising students’ awareness of and interest in various careers and supporting them in their postsecondary aspirations. Doan earned her double-major in Mathematical Economic Analysis and Statistics from Rice University in 2011.
About Their Idea: The BridgeYear Advising Website reimagines career access for students and their families, promoting nontraditional learning and earning opportunities in the trades. Featuring information on vocational training programs vetted for affordability, employment outcomes, and mission alignment, the website empowers students to forge and navigate their own path towards gainful employment after high school graduation, with access to an advisor for holistic student support. By making previously unknown vocational training programs available through an open-source resource and providing self-directed learning resources to increase learner eligibility for these programs, this website will increase the accessibility of high-return career pathways for underserved students.
LinkedIn (Victoria Chen)| Facebook | Instagram
Jen Chiou | California
About Jen: Jen Chiou (she/her) is the founder of CodeSpeak Labs, a computer science education social enterprise. CodeSpeak Labs empowers and educates students in grades PreK-12; over 10,000 students in California and New York have taken their classes and over 500,000 kids across the country have used their curriculum. Prior to founding CodeSpeak Labs, she was the founding Executive Director of Crisis Text Line, the first nationwide SMS-based crisis hotline, and worked at the global NGO Teach For All and the nonprofit consulting firm the Bridgespan Group. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford.
About Their Idea: The Next Step is a creative agency of BIPOC high school students from underserved communities, working with professional mentors from CodeSpeak Labs, who get real world experience creating social media content for mission-driven organizations. Student creatives are paid, gain experience to build their skills, resumes and portfolios, and receive ongoing mentorship, including college and career support.
Nate Conroy & Megan Otero | Wisconsin
About Nate: Nate Conroy was a teacher in Portland Oregon and rural Honduras before creating the STEM program MeterHero. The mission-driven company empowers students to collect, analyze and act upon data from utility meters already located where they live, to practice authentic, uncanned, and rigorous scientific inquiry. Nate’s interest in data’s capacity to help us better utilize natural resources comes from visiting his grandparent’s farm on the California-Oregon border where there is often not enough water to support local farmers, endangered fish and other wildlife. He looks forward to expanding access to the program through partnerships with non-traditional education networks.
About Megan: Megan Otero is the Principal of St. Joan Antida all-girls High School in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Before becoming Principal Megan was a veteran educator having taught secondary science in South America and in majority-minority schools on Milwaukee’s south-side. Megan’s passion for maintaining high learning standards for her students led her to co-found the MeterHero program. Megan is a lover of good cooking, Wisconsin’s outdoors and laughter.
About Their Idea: MeterHero empowers students to collect, analyze and act upon data from utility meters already located where they live, to practice relevant, uncanned, and rigorous scientific inquiry.
Mirta Desir & Harold Jean-Louis| New York
About Mirta: Mirta Desir is the CEO and Founder of Smart Coos, a web-based platform where educators and parents can get live language sessions for their children and the data to support their learning. Previously, Mirta was the Founder and Managing Partner at Desir & Associates, a civil rights litigation practice. There she focused on fighting on behalf of law-enforcement officers whose rights were abused by fellow law enforcement personnel. Mirta was also the Founder and CEO of Link Haiti, a nonprofit that provided short-term sustainable solutions for the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Within a-week after the earthquake, Link Haiti had an emergency medical team on the ground and assisted thousands of Haitians that were in critical condition. Prior to her work with Link Haiti, Mirta started her career in education and was the Founder and CEO of 1on1 Tutoring, an educational service dedicated to serving low-income youths in New York City.
About Harold: Harold Jean-Louis has worked in the ed-tech space the past 6 years. As the co-founder of Smart Coos, an education-based language learning platform for children, he has worked with schools, day care providers and parents. Over the years he has been able to establish strategic partnerships with community centers and other nonprofits to contribute to the company’s impact. Harold used his past experience of auditing and tax knowledge to work on the company’s internal processes and systems. Additionally, Harold has successfully help onboarded Smart Coos Language Instructors as a result growing their remote team to over 200+ instructors.
About Their Idea: Smart Coos offers early childhood programs that provide support for families to engage with their children and build literacy and language skills for more inclusive communities and schools. By providing the early steps towards language and literacy, children are better prepared before they enter the school systems for more informed families and education systems. Through online tools and school partnerships, Smart Coos focuses on research-based innovative language learning for children across 8 different languages. Programs provided utilize common-core standards that are aligned with highly interactive approaches to connect skills in higher family engagement for parents, children, and schools.
LinkedIn (Mirta) | LinkedIn (Harold) | Instagram
Martha Diaz | California
About Martha: Colombian-American futurist Martha Diaz (MD) is an award winning community organizer, educator, and social entrepreneur. Her passion is advancing human rights and transforming communities through Hip Hop education, media, and technology. In 2010, MD formed the Hip Hop Education Center for research, curriculum development, and training to professionalize the field of Hip Hop and education. The Center is now part of the Universal Hip Hop Museum’s Education Department. In 2018, MD founded Hip Hop CU (CommUniversity), a virtual microschool offering youth personalized career education, mentorship, and internship opportunities.
About Their Idea: Hip Hop CommUniversity (HHCU) is a virtual microschool that helps youth age 13–25 living in low-to-moderate-income communities earn school credits, graduate, and enter the workforce through personalized career education, mentorship, internships, and apprenticeships that lead to job opportunities and upward mobility. HHCU offers a marketplace of culturally responsive Hip Hop-based courses across all subjects and career exploration programming that inspire, empower, and challenge students to take charge.
Chris Duni, Farian Rabbani, & Dr. Anne Wyllie | Connecticut
About Chris: Chris is a disability advocate and educator with over 10 years experience as a public school teacher. He has also served as a board member of the NO/AIDS Task Force, founded in 1983. Chris is currently a digital curriculum designer working for StudySync and McGraw-Hill Education. Chris was born, raised, and lives in Greater New Haven. As a student, he was an activist in Connecticut and New York.
About Farian: Farian is a recent UConn alumni and a youth activist. He has strong ties to high school and college activists across the state, including the Sunrise Movement and BLM. Farian is the founder of Students for Jahana Hayes, successfully aiding in electing the congresswoman through digital and field organizing. Hayes is the first African-American woman to represent Connecticut in the U.S. Congress and the 2015 National Teacher of the Year. Farian is a first generation American and lives in Connecticut.
About Their Idea: Be (A)Part is a youth-led, scientist-engaged mentoring program in Connecticut. They inspire and train diverse young people to be effective leaders and volunteers at social justice, health, and human services nonprofits. Be (A)Part partners with networks of young adult leaders on college campuses; they lead programming, volunteer at local nonprofits, and mentor high school students who also want to make lasting positive change. Be (A)Part unique program reaches youth through (1) public workshops (2) near peer mentoring, and (3) volunteer and job placement. They believe all young people should have what they need to participate, succeed, and rebuild.
LinkedIn (Chris) | LinkedIn (Farian) | Instagram
Kendra Denmark | Georgia
About Kendra: Kendra Denmark, M.Ed. has aspirations to change the world, one youth at a time through education and financial empowerment. With over 15 years of experience of working with students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds in higher education settings, she has a proven track record of helping students create and achieve their personal, financial and academic goals. As a first generation, low income college graduate, she understands the journey and resources necessary to overcome barriers to obtain success. Kendra is a Certified Financial Life Coach who equips communities with the motivation and resources necessary to enhance their financial wellness.
About Their Idea: Clear Camp is an active, engaging, hands-on learning experience that allows high school scholars to explore topics such as financial literacy, social emotional intelligence and physical wellness. The 5 day multifaceted camp allows scholars to embark on their financial literacy building journey through financial, mental and physical wellness activities.
Domari Dickinson | Maryland
About Domari: Domari Dickinson (she/her/hers) is an educational consultant and parenting coach who works with school districts, school leaders, teachers, parents and educational companies from across the country to help increase student success. She is passionate about helping equip parents with tools and support to break negative parenting patterns and build positive, purposeful, and peace-filled homes. Domari is also a proud unschooling mama of four and she is committed to helping others decolonize their views on parenting and education.
About Their Idea: The Liberatory Living 4-Week Summer Intensive for Parents is a virtual program that provides BIPOC parents with tools and support to help them move away from oppressive parenting practices so that they can adopt a more liberatory, love-centered, & restorative way of interacting with the young people in their lives.
Alayna Eagle Shield & Sunshine Claymore | South Dakota
About Alanya: Alayna Eagle Shield is Lakȟóta Húŋkpapȟa/Arikara and a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Alayna is a Doctoral Student at the College of Education and a Research Assistant at the Banks Center for Educational Justice at the University of Washington. Her previous professional work includes the SRST Health Education Director, a Lakota Language instructor at the Lakota Language Immersion Nest and as the Language Specialist for the Language & Culture Institute. Alayna earned her B.S. from the University of Mary, Eminent Scholar of Lakota from Sitting Bull College, and Master of Public Health from NDSU.
About Sunshine: Sunshine- Sunshine Rose (Claymore) is a mother from Standing Rock, a graduate from Sitting Bull College with a Bachelor’s in Environmental Science, and a board member with Mni Wiconi Clinic and Farm. As a Regenerative Land Management Coordinator with Earth Activist Training, and permaculture facilitator for Mni Wiconi Nakicizin Wounspe, educating others to better understand and work with natural systems is integral to her day to day life. Sunshine is actively working to restore the land she lives on and create harmonious, pro-environmental relationships between people and the planet.
About Their Idea: Mní Wičhóni Nakíčižiŋ Wóuŋspe works to rebuild our nation through a sovereign education rooted in mitákuye oyás’iŋ (we are all related). By honoring our connections to the land, each other, and ourselves, we call back our spirits and return to who are and are meant to be. We use an educational model based in cultural protocol and intergenerational land-based learning that supports each young person into stepping into their own meaningful role within the community.
Cameron Fadjo & Allen Hillery | New York
About Cameron: Cameron Fadjo, PhD is an educational designer and developer based in New York. From developing the first city-wide 6–12 computer science education program for the New York City Dept. of Education to leading multiple educational product development teams at Google, Cameron has worked for 16 years to create innovative, equity-focused programs, products, and services for all students. In 2020, with the support of the 4.0 New Normal Fellowship, he founded Data Stories, a non-profit online curriculum and community dedicated to connecting and empowering students through the power of words, visualizations, and data.
About Allen: Allen (He/Him/His) serves as part time faculty at Columbia University’s Applied Analytics Masters Program. In this role he is Teacher’s Associate for the program’s Storytelling With Data Course where he facilitates group discussions and advises students on their course assignments sharing his real world experiences. He has extensive experience in developing and executing data analysis and integrating results into marketing programs and executive presentations. Allen is very passionate about data literacy and curates an article series that focuses on the importance of creating data narratives and spotlighting notable figures on how their use of storytelling made major impacts on society.
About Their Idea: Data Stories in the Community (DSC) is a hybrid (in-person/online) learning experience for high school students that explores real world data from local businesses through ‘data storytelling’. DSC trains students to use real world data in conjunction with visualizations and words to tell compelling stories about local businesses. Mentorship from industry professionals and experienced high school ‘data storytellers’ is provided to cohort members to assist in their development of analytical and storytelling skills. DSC ensures students develop skills in an authentic context that amplifies their own voice while simultaneously increasing the visibility of local businesses through ‘data stories’.
LinkedIn (Cameron) | LinkedIn (Allen)
Telicia Fogle-Simon | Texas
About Telicia: Telicia Fogle-Simon is a mother, wife, educator, mentor, consultant and entrepreneur. She attended WGU where she received a B.A. and a M.Ed. Then she went on to pursue in 2012 at Lamar University her M.Ed. in Education Administration. Ms. Fogle-Simon has a 22 year career in both private and public education. As a servant leader, she developed a passion for motivating and inspiring others to find “Excellence” in themselves. On this premise, she founded Choice Nation Academy in 2017, a youth leadership academy that bridges the gap at home, school and in the community through coaching.
About Their Idea: Choice Lab is a personalized flexible learning model for underprivileged & underserved youth to become empowered youth leaders. At minimum to no-cost to families, youth build relationships with key stakeholders in their local, regional, and state-wide community while developing their social, mental and emotional wellness as well as increase their individual academic successes. Our goal-oriented project-based instruction builds self-discipline, critical thinking, service leadership and purpose within youth, thereby raising their percentage for life’s successes.
Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Instagram
Rebecca Gartner | Colorado
About Rebecca: Rebecca Gartner is the Founder of The Little Village, an early learning center which is part of a non-profit organization supporting single mother refugee families in Aurora, Colorado. In her role, Rebecca focuses on family inclusion, cultural exchange, dual language development, and trauma-informed practices. By collaborating with a youth board, parent groups, and a refugee committee, Rebecca co-creates programs and informs a multicultural curriculum that supports the whole family. Rebecca is committed to equity in early childhood, as well as life-long learning. Rebecca studied Speech Language Pathology as an undergrad, and holds a graduate certificate in Early Childhood Leadership.
About Their Idea: The Little Village is an early learning center serving primarily single-mother refugee families as part of a larger non-profit called The Village Institute. Their school-age program brings equitable opportunities to children K-8 in a full-time program during the summer and after-school program during the school year. The participants themselves have identified learning opportunities of interest, educational field trips (both in-person locally and virtually around the world), and interesting activities that they would not otherwise have access to.
Nneka Gigi | California
About Nneka: Nneka Gigi is a Nigerian Multimedia Visual Artist out of Los Angeles, CA. Her work utilizes themes such as Afrofuturism, Hip Hop and 90s Nostalgia with a particular focus on her Nigerian identity and Cultural Pride. As a hair adornment artist and storyteller, she is committed to uplifting Black girls sense of self and multiliteracies through culturally relevant interventions, like Black hair culture. May 2022 marks Nneka’s graduation from her doctoral studies program at a HBCU, which marks a monumental moment due to the nature of her dissertation focusing on a subject and age group that exposed a deficit in the fight to close the academic and opportunity gap for Black girls.
About Their Idea: Beyond Adornment is a documentary series that will produce an educational resource website and workshop series focused on highlighting the perseverance of Black women in the hair care industry amidst the pandemic. The natural hair industry is valued at $4.2 billion with Black ownership representing a mere 3%. Black girls and their families deserve culturally relevant interventions that seek to empower their financial literacies and economic competitiveness. By having access to the documentary series, the resource forum and participation in a series of workshops, Black girls and their families will be able to demand and retain more economic equity in the natural hair industry. Through our relationship with traditional educators, home schooling communities and after school programs across the United States, the potential impact of this initiative can help inspire more mass conversations and actions towards generational wealth and healing.
Chelsea Hylton & Nora Seilheimer| Lousiana
About Chelsea: Chelsea Hylton is a New Orleans based educator and Founder of Project Peaceful Warriors, a non-profit developed to bring the tools of Trauma-Informed Yoga and Mindfulness to students and educators. Upon moving to New Orleans in 2014, Chelsea taught K-12 students. As Founding Director of Project Peaceful Warriors, she has taught over 8,000 hours of yoga in the classroom, trained over 700 teachers, and taught over 5,000 students in the City of New Orleans. Her work with Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine was published in the Journal of Psychology Research and BehaviorManagement.
About Nora: Nora Seilheimer, MFA and CYT, is the Executive Director of Project Peaceful Warriors, a New Orleans based nonprofit that works with local schools, community centers, and organizations to build healing-centered learning spaces through the trauma-informed tools of yoga and mindfulness. A former Special Education teacher, Nora has shared yoga and mindfulness with young people for over a decade. Combining her professional experience in creative writing and providing specialized services that meet individual students’ needs, Nora roots her work in student voice and choice so that students may disrupt cycles of trauma and embody who they are on their own terms.
About Their Idea: 1-on-1 Mindfulness Coaching puts participants in charge of their own support plan as they determine which mindfulness techniques to practice and personalize, how their coach assists them, and short and long term goals for integrating the techniques into their daily lives. Participants will gain a deeper understanding of themselves by monitoring their unique and evolving physical, mental, and emotional needs. They will learn how to tailor specific mindfulness techniques to those needs as well as how to advocate for themselves in various settings and support other community members engaging in similar work.
Brandy Jackson & Robyn Donaldson | Florida
About Brandy: Brandy Jackson has been a teacher for over 17 years and is passionate about preparing all students to be successful in life through building career-ready skills. She is Aecern’s Education Lead and a middle school STEAM educator in Hillsborough County, FL, where she teaches robotics, introduction to business and sixth grade “wheel class” — designed to engage students with career skills. Brandy also runs community-based after-school and summer extension programs through her Mobile MakerSpace. She started her career as a language arts and social studies teacher and uses this experience to bring social emotional and language skills into her technology classes.
About Robyn: Robyn Donaldson is the owner of Renew Construction Services based in Hillsborough County, FL and founder of STEM Xposure whose mission is to expose African American students to STEM in the context of Architectural Design, Construction Building and other underrepresented STEM careers through out-of-school programming. She has served as NABWIC National Education Chair, created engineering curriculum for Florida Polytechnic University, and led the creation of a NABWIC club at FAMU. Robyn is the ACT-SO Chair for the NAACP local branch where she helps unrepresented students achieve or exceed the level of their counterparts in the STEM classroom and boardrooms world-wide.
About Their Idea: Build our Community Strong is a cross-generational program where students and their families work together as a team to develop STEM and architectural design skills and use design thinking strategies to imagine and pitch solutions to address the challenge of homelessness in our community. It seeks to encourage our community to embrace STEM to further academic and career paths, and to use strategies that value each voice to develop and implement effective solutions to critical challenges. It provides scalable resources and access to networks to allow our community and others to continue to build STEM learning and problem solving capacity.
John Jenkins | Texas
About John: John Jenkins is a serial entrepreneur and founder of LEVERAGE Program in Houston, TX. An entrepreneurship education program designed to bridge the knowledge, accessibility, and experience gaps locking Black youth out of the innovation economy. His work is a personal response to an overwhelming frustration of seeing the lived experiences of people of color being undervalued, overlooked, and underestimated. He believes that reimagining economic empowerment strategies is key to affecting change through communal wealth building and is working to empower communities to take on challenges with immediacy.
About Their Idea: LEVERAGE’s goal is to address the diversity, knowledge, and resource gaps preventing Black youth from fully participating in the innovation economy by creating widespread access to knowledge, mentors, financial resources, and hands on experimentation through partnerships with existing on-the-ground organizations in an effort to change the face and archetype of the next generation of entrepreneurs.
Baiyina Jihad & Kyendal Eaton | Georgia
About Baiyina: Baiyina Jihad is a former Teach for America educator with experience teaching literacy to elementary school students in Atlanta, GA. Baiyina is the visionary behind BTC by deciding to solve a problem after witnessing her 3rd-grade students struggle to read on grade level. Her mission is to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline by providing additional resources to assist disadvantaged students with reading. As a full-time entrepreneur, Baiyina has spent her time and effort building an equitable service to enrich students academically and socially.
About Kyendal: Kyendal Eaton is a current licensed Master of Social Worker with previous experience as an Intensive Reading Teacher and Reading Interventionist to high school students in the inner city of Jacksonville, FL. Her passion for educating, empowering, and encouraging children and teens began after witnessing her mother, a veteran teacher, influence the students in her classroom. Her experience as an educator along with her social work lens brings about a whole-child perspective in regards to learning.
About Their Idea: Beyond the Classroom is a personalized virtual literacy service that uniquely addresses the reading deficiency gap for students in 2nd-5th grade. Beyond the Classroom uses data to help enrich students’ fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary skills with targeted lessons. In addition, we tailor our lessons to incorporate social-emotional literacy and confidence building. Our service matches students with engaging diverse reading content that tailors to their personal interest and reading level. Students are matched with quality literacy coaches that model, and teach how to apply these strategies to their reading.
LinkedIn (Baiyina)
Christine Jojola & Dawn Miller | Colorado
About Christine: Christine Jojola is an educator /entrepreneur who was born and raised in Albuquerque, NM. She has taught for 36 years and has a passion for helping our youngest learners grow in literacy through writing. She believes in the power of storytelling and teaching children to use their voices in written form and share them with a broader audience. She believes this brings out creativity and demystifies the writing process while building voice and esteem. She and her partner founded Kid2KidLit in 2018 and have recently began to share children’s writing as ebooks on their website.
About Dawn: Dawn Miller is a lifelong elementary educator with a talent for making each of her students feel like they are the most special student in the class. She has spent her career making literacy acquisition seamless for our youngest learners. She and her partner both have a passion for children’s stories and turning those stories into published books. The books students write and create are the most loved in a classroom and bringing them to life for a larger audience is her goal.
About Their Idea: Kid2KidLit is a face-to-face writing camp/club that is “Connecting Children Through Literacy”. We demystify the writing process by creating a safe space for our youngest authors to explore their thoughts and ideas. Children have stories to tell and each workshop begins with storytelling which is a way to build their own community of writers. During the workshop, we provide expert coaching to focus ideas and build creativity while maintaining authenticity. Students walk away with a hard copy of their book and currently, Kid2KidLit is working on publishing children’s books as ebooks for more availability.
Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn (Christine)| LinkedIn (Dawn) | Instagram
Nakeyshia Kendall | California
About Nakeyshia: Nakeyshia Kendall Williams is the Founder and CEO of MindCatcher, which helps educators shift their mindset, practices and systems to being more youth-led. Prior to founding MindCatcher, Nakeyshia led product marketing for a Pearson tablet-based, K-12 curriculum and co-led an education partnership to increase public education innovation with support from Kellogg Foundation and Gates Foundation. Nakeyshia is an EdLoC member and alum of National Equity Project’s Leading for Equity Fellowship and 4.0 Schools’ Tiny Fellowship. Before education, she spent over a decade in finance. Nakeyshia holds a BA from Columbia College and an MBA from the Wharton School.
About Their Idea: Youth Learning Lab is a learning experience that puts young people in the driver’s seat of their learning. Youth Learning Lab enables youth to pursue passion projects with the support of a caring adult. Our 10-week experience provides youth with $250 and the power to decide how best to reach their goals. Our core outcome is that youth have a visceral experience demonstrating that their voices have value and, no matter the outcome, their ideas are worthy of exploration.
Melanie Kong and Christine Witcher | Washington
About Melanie: Melanie is co-founder and CEO of Floop, a feedback platform that helps teachers give feedback 4x faster and teaches students how to give, receive, and use feedback to learn. She has over 10 years of experience in education as a former high school STEM teacher, professional development trainer and coach, and curriculum developer. With a B.S. in Engineering from UT Austin, she is also a product engineer with experience in R&D, product development, and user research at P&G and Shell.
About Christine: Christine Witcher is a technology and innovation specialist for grades 5–12, teaches middle school science and manages a makerspace at an all-girls school in Bellevue, Washington. She is co-founder and product manager at Floop Edu, a feedback platform that helps teachers give meaningful feedback faster and teaches students to actively engage with feedback. Christine is passionate about using technology to solve problems and enhance learning in the classroom. She believes that technology should empower, and not replace, the teacher.
About Their Idea: Floop’s Startup Internship Kit enables underrepresented students to develop work-ready skills in product development, design, technology, and entrepreneurship by providing an easy and structured way for startups and small organizations to onboard, manage, and develop the learning of high school students within their organizations, while meeting real needs of the company. Students learn inside the growing organization, getting the professional support and mentorship they need to succeed, while working on business-relevant projects and having a real impact in the organization. The hosting startups benefit from the systematized and structured support that Floop has created via the Startup Internship Kit.
Jennifer Larino & E’jaaz Mason | Louisiana
About Jennifer: Jennifer Larino is a journalist and co-founder of Lede New Orleans. She oversees Lede’s reporting fellowship program and skills workshops, and guides the organization’s mission and strategic direction. Larino has 11 years of experience covering local news, most recently as a lead reporter at NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. Prior to that, she was managing editor at New Orleans CityBusiness. Larino founded Lede New Orleans to address the lack of representation in local journalism. The granddaughter of Cuban and Puerto Rican immigrants, she has a special interest in serving the city’s vibrant, but often overlooked, Latino community.
About E’Jaaz: E’jaaz Mason is a filmmaker, educator and co-founder of Lede New Orleans. He oversees Lede’s community engagement and multimedia content instruction and creation. Mason has produced video content for dozens of brands, including Unilever and Essence Music Festival. He also led the film program at New Orleans Charter Science & Math High School from 2016 to 2020. His work is informed by his experience growing up Black in New Orleans, where he was immersed in rich culture, but had few opportunities to learn skills to document it. He is dedicated to helping local underserved youth kickstart creative careers.
About Their Idea: Lede New Orleans trains Black, Brown, Latinx, Asian and LGBTQ+ youth to tell the stories of marginalized communities in and around New Orleans. Lede New Orleans provides pathways for youth to explore a career in media through a paid, 14-week community reporting fellowship, which nurtures civic engagement and focuses on developing writing, photo and skills. We also offer free, year-round media skills workshops and publish stories that center BlPOC and LGBTQ+ voices, meeting the pressing need for local media that reflects the community it serves.
Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Instagram | LinkedIn (Jennifer) | LinkedIn ( E’Jaaz)
Sari Levy | Louisiana
About Sari: Sari Levy is an enthusiastic educator with 14 years of teaching, coaching, and leadership experience. Most recently, Sari was a 1st-6th grade Math Interventionist at Bricolage Academy in New Orleans. Prior to Bricolage, she served as an Assistant Principal and 2nd & 3rd grade teacher at ARISE Academy. She developed new concepts for math education as part of the fellowships with New Schools for New Orleans and 4.0 Schools. Sari is the founder of Make It Count Math Math Tutoring, and works with students locally and nationally. She has two kids, Edwin and Lucas.
About Their Idea: Make It Count Math (MICM) provides free, meaningful math moments for students in partnership with local organizations. This math tutoring program offers academic support fueled by fun and feedback to build confidence and understanding. MICM adds an additional layer of support to families while they navigate their children’s education. By offering this through organizations where families bring their children to be enriched and learn, MICM expands their opportunity to learn and grow. Providing this experience for free makes it possible for anyone to participate, without imposing a financial barrier. MICM provides students with on-going practice that is motivating and exciting!
Tom Mayer & Darrian Douglas| Louisiana
About Tom: Tom Mayer is a New Orleans native who has worked in music and youth development for 9 years. He holds a BA in Ethnomusicology from the University of Rochester and an MA in Global Creative and Cultural Industries from the University of London. Tom has spent his career guiding the incredible energy of young people and learning about the power of strong, authentic relationships. He occasionally writes for VeryLocal New Orleans and can be found walking his two poorly behaved dogs around Bayou St. John.
About Darrian: Jackson, Mississippi native Darrian Douglas has fashioned a successful music career with jazz groups throughout New Orleans and New York City. He has shared the stage with Wynton Marsalis, Victor Goines, Jazzmeia Horn, Brianna Thomas, and Ellis Marsalis. Darrian’s newest role is Executive Director of Second Line Arts Collective, a non-profit organization focused on creating arts education programs that enable young artists to thrive in the modern economy.
About their Idea: The 2021 Sanaa Music Workshop from Second Line Arts Collective is a two-week virtual summer program that redefines music education for aspiring artists. Today’s musicians often have to operate as their own manager and agent, navigating the intersection of art and business. The Sanaa Music Workshop provides a comprehensive introduction to the critical skills beyond performance that are essential for a prosperous career in the music industry. Aspiring musicians ages 15–23 will learn from and work with professional musicians and music industry veterans throughout the two-week program. Topics covered include branding, marketing, financial planning, and digital music production.
www.secondlinearts.org | Facebook | YouTube | Instagram
Alexander McConduit | Louisiana
About Alexander: Alexander McConduit is an author, educator & entrepreneur based in New Orleans. Since 2010, he’s visited schools around the world to share his stories & to encourage kids to read, write & publish their own books! For these efforts, Alex was honored as one of Gambit Magazine’s Top 40 Under 40 and selected as an honorary board member for First Book of GNO. Currently, Alex is hosting Virtual Author Visits with organizations around the world while also working in partnership with South Hill Elementary in Ithaca, NY to teach students how to write and publish their own books!
About Their Idea: Science Says is a virtual platform that aims to bridge the gap between what students are learning in science class and what’s actually happening in today’s world. Science Says allows students to gain access to top minds in science through virtual forums accompanied by multimedia resources created by our journalist and storyteller hosts. During our virtual forums students have the opportunity to ask questions and engage scientists from the comfort of their own home. This allows students and schools to access engaging state of the art science anywhere there is an internet connection!
Geoffrey Moran | California
About Geoffrey: Geoffrey Moran is a product/marketing leader in software, sustainability and education who’s worked across Fortune 500 corporations, creative agencies and startups. He loves encouraging children, and was founder of an educational games company that received several accolades, including a Museum Store Association Best Products Award. Geoff recently traveled with the California Governor’s Office to Mexico City to participate in binational sustainability talks, and volunteers for an early learning center in Tijuana, Mexico. He was a Fulbright Fellow in Sustainability Values at the University of British Columbia, where he received an M.A. in Philosophy as a University Graduate Fellow.
About Their Idea: The Together Mural empowers learning groups to boldly envision a “better world” by painting their vision of one on a 10’ x 3’ canvas mural while stationed in a calm green outdoors setting. A guided group first brainstorms ideas that advance environmental or social sustainability in their community, then paints them into a visionary mural they later transform into reality through a community impact project. We weave photos and stories from all engagements into one continuous online “super mural” for additional cross-cultural connection and community. The program employs a whole-child development approach with measures of belonging, achievement & optimism.
togethermural.org | Facebook | LinkedIn
NJ Mvondo | California
About NJ: NJ is a writer, artist, social entrepreneur and community organizer based in Davis, CA. She is the owner of Multiculturalism Rocks and its BIPOC bookstore — two platforms that promote cultural diversity, with an emphasis on children’s literature. She is also the founder of Multicultural Press, and of the Davis Network for Africa (DNA) — a grassroots organization uniting the African Diaspora and the community at large. Two of her latest initiatives are the Interactive Healing Arts Project (HAP) and the non-profit Multicultural Families Rock (free BIPOC books for underserved communities). Additionally, NJ serves her city as a Human Relations Commissioner.
About Their Idea: The Interactive Healing Arts Project brings students together across cultures around the theme of healing. It explores art as a tool to healing, and gives children opportunities not just to process the current social stress and trauma, but also the means to be encouraged and to encourage each other via culturally relevant art and literacy activities that centers healing.
davishealingartsproject.com | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn
Alex Owens & Diana Turner | Louisiana
About Alex: Alex Owens has 10 years of experience as an educator. Most recently, he helped develop the Innovator’s Workshop at Bricolage Academy in New Orleans. That program provides the space for kids to design and build everything from stop motion animation to cardboard mazes to podcasts. He strives to work side by side with students to design authentic learning opportunities that that are engaging, inclusive, and student owned. Be Loud Studios is a product of that effort.
About Diana: Diana Turner is an educator based in New Orleans, LA. She has worked for 12 years in New Orleans schools including being a founding member at Firstline Schools and Bricolage Academy. Diana is dedicated to advocating for anti-racist pedagogies in schools and spaces for kids to play and be heard. She founded Be Loud Studios in 2019 by creating a radio station in her school when she saw students disengaged in their traditional school work and needing more practice with digital media skills. She looks forward to building partnerships across the fellowship.
About Their Idea: Be Loud Radio is a free, extracurricular program where kid-DJs write and record radio segments. Grounded in the notion that kids should be heard by the larger community, the Be Loud DJs write, record, and mix their own radio segments to be shared on a weekly FM broadcast, the Be Loud Radio Hour. Designed to amplify their voices and experiences, kid-DJs are encouraged to believe in the strength of their words to broadcast a more equitable world.
Aatash Parikh & Raj Rao | California
About Aatash: Aatash Parikh is an educator based in Oakland, CA. Most recently, he has served as a computer science teacher at West Oakland Middle School. After working several years as a professional software engineer including at companies such as Google and Khan Academy, he did a one-year residency and earned an M.Ed. at High Tech High in San Diego, CA. After that, he helped launch a project-based charter school, Latitude High, in East Oakland, CA. In 2020, Aatash launched Inkwire, an online platform for students to do authentic projects and share their learning with a public audience.
About Raj: Raj Rao is a veteran engineering leader in Silicon Valley. He has been a software engineer for 23 years, including the last 11 years as a mobile architect and developer. Since 2016, he has been a technical lead on the mobile team at Salesforce in San Francisco. Raj grew up in India and is a self-taught engineer, and he is passionate about helping youth in underserved communities gaining access to skills that have the potential to impact their economic trajectories. In 2020, he began working with Aatash to teach Swift/iOS (iPhone) programming to middle school students in West Oakland.
About Their Idea: The Town Incubator is a mobile app development and entrepreneurship for teens in West Oakland, CA. Students participating in The Town Incubator design, develop, and ship their own apps to the App Store, using the same tools professional mobile developers use, and in the process creating businesses or organizations that serve their community.
Rajan Patel & Micky Wolf | Maryland
About Rajan: Rajan is an avid maker who believes we can build a better world. He co-invented the Embrace incubator, a product of empathy-driven design that has impacted and saved the lives of over 300,000 babies across the developing world. Today, as Co-Founder and CEO of Dent Education, Rajan is passionate about empowering the makers and problem solvers of tomorrow. He trained at Stanford’s d.school to become a teacher of design thinking and has organized and led programs of his own across twelve countries, though Dent’s work currently focuses on empowering high schoolers in Baltimore City. Rajan holds a BS in Biomechanical Engineering from Stanford, an MBA from Stanford, and an MPA from Harvard.
About Micky: Micky is a social entrepreneur focused on empowering people to better serve others and build equity. At the University of Texas at Austin, he served as Student Body Vice President and co-founded the Social Entrepreneurship Learning Lab, the Improve UT Challenge, and Texas for Expanding Opportunity. He believes strangers to be friends he hasn’t met yet, and is passionate about positive psychology and freestyle rapping. Micky is Venture for America fellow and holds a BBA in Business Honors and a BA in Plan II Honors from the University of Texas, where he was a Forty Acres Scholar.
About Their Idea: Made@Dent is a youth co-owned social enterprise that serves as a platform for youth to design and build products that meet real customer needs and generate value. In building, having equity in, and growing the business, youth are able to learn as they earn. We are rooted in the human-centered design process, innovation in product development and distributed manufacturing, and promoting equity through entrepreneurship. Made@Dent youth have delivered tens of thousands of products, from custom swag to PPE at the height of the pandemic, earning over $100,000 in revenue.
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn (Rajan) | LinkedIn Micky
Zachary Patton | California
About Zachary: Born and raised in Buffalo, New York, Zach is a designer and photographer currently residing in Los Angeles. He launched his career as a creative entrepreneur in 2009 when he founded the first Black owned skateboarding company and retail space in Western New York. Since then, he’s left his mark on a handful of other industries such as hip hop, education and technology. Additionally, Zach is an advocate for financial literacy, Black ownership, K-5 education, prison reform and mental health in the digital era. Currently, he is focused on using virtual reality to serve as pathway between Black students exploring alternative mental health practices.
About their Idea: Just B.E. is a VR gallery and art therapy program that disrupts traditional perspectives on what is considered fine art and who has the authority to showcase it. Furthermore, the gallery and interactive programming seeks to empower high school students to render their voices visible on six subject areas that are vital towards enhancing the Black experience nationally and globally. Through our free art therapy programming seminars, students will partake in group conversations centered on healing and curate a final project to debut in the virtual gallery. By critically analyzing complex issues impacted by systems of oppression through a national and international lens, Black youth will inspire a mass global healing event that will trigger Black communities all around the world to unite on issues that we all battle.
Brad Peterson & Alexandria Scott | Idaho
About Brad: Brad Petersen started his path in education as a teacher in Houston through Teach For America. He then went on to co-found, design, and build a social-justice STEM elementary school in Idaho, Future Public School. He now leads Brighter Fun, and recently published his first children’s book — Happy Puppy, Angry Tiger, distributed via Penguin-Random House. Brad is an alum of the 4.0 Schools’ Tiny Fellowship as well as NewSchools Venture Fund’s Invent Cohort. He has a M.Ed. from the University of Houston and is currently pursuing an MBA from the University of Illinois.
About Alexandria: Alexandria is a writer, founder of Ditto Kids magazine, educator and community advocate who helps readers learn about travel, history, language, culture and policy and the world through the lens of multicultural and anti-bias education. With a background in diverse sectors of nonprofit management and programming, she uses her domestic and international nonprofit experience in conjunction with her B.A in political science from Brigham Young University to create educational programming and materials examining issues surrounding diversity, inclusion and anti-racism from multiple lenses. A Baltimore native, she lives in the Washington DC area with her husband and three children.
About their Idea: I Care About Me: Children’s Self Care and Healing Activity Book is an exciting, fun way for children and their caregivers to learn and reflect about their intrinsic identity. In this beautifully-illustrated activity book, learners can take time away from screens to consider self-compassion, empathy, anti-bias activities, trauma-informed self-care, and optimism for the bright things to come. We partner with a sustainable manufacturer for a first run of 2,000 copies on Forest Stewardship Council paper with vegetable-based inks serving an estimated 5,000 children. We anticipate a second run of 5,000 copies serving an additional 12,000 children.
Cescily Phillips | Missouri
About Cescily: Cescily Phillips is the Founder and Executive Director of Inspired Aesthetics. Originally from Chicago, IL, Cescily is a passionate wife, mother, and educator. Growing up, Cescily experienced firsthand the impact that amazing people and programs could have on your life. An alumna of the University of Missouri, Cescily holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Education. With ten years in education, Cescily has served as Dean of Students at both the middle and high school levels, as well as taught both English and Theatre. Cescily believes that with the right tools and experiences, young people are capable of anything.
About Their Idea: Inspired Aesthetics is a free after school program for young people in grades 9–12 that provides access to top quality, year-round arts education and training, mentoring, and academic support. They are focused on creating and providing opportunities for young people who may not have access to them otherwise. Their free arts training meets daily and is taught by professional artists who mirror their community. At Inspired Aesthetics, they are working to keep young people safe and engaged by filling the gap in after school programming for teens and leveling the playing field in arts related careers and post secondary paths.
YouTube | Facebook | LinkedIn | Instagram
Marvin Pierre | Texas
About Marvin: Marvin Pierre’s career started in an unexpected place for a leader in Education — at the financial firm Goldman Sachs. But when the economic downturn of 2008 forced him to re-evaluate, he decided to pursue work that truly inspired him. When a friend who was teaching in Brooklyn public schools asked him to speak to her 5th grade class, he felt connected to the students. Marvin also recognized that, because they were largely reading below grade level, these students had a higher chance of dropping out or being caught up in the criminal justice system. At that moment, he took a leap of faith and decided to pursue a career in education. Along with his co-founder Vanessa Ramirez, Marvin became educated about the school-to-prison pipeline, which routes 12,000 of Houston’ kids aged 10–18 to the juvenile justice system each year. Over the course of a year, they worked together to create 8 Million Stories, a nonprofit supporting disconnected youth with education, employment skills training, and social and emotional
About Their Idea: Program Overview The Sons of Promise program provides middle school boys with relevant academic and social experiences that will ensure their success academically, socially and professionally. We will adhere to our core principles ALL times in our dealings with our brothers, sisters, family, teachers, community and ourselves. P — Perseverance R — Respect O- Opportunity M — Manhood I — Intelligence S- Service E-Empowerment
Lisa Quattlebaum | Pennsylvania
About Lisa: A native Philadelphian, Lisa returned to the US after over a decade in Asia. Inspiring insight and action through storytelling, journalism, and media have long been her preferred approach to address intersectional issues such as racial and gender equity, sustainability, and inclusion within leadership ecosystems. She founded The Homesteadista to initiate solutions-oriented conversations about creating cities and spaces where it’s good to be a woman. As a women’s leadership coach, DEI consultant, educator, and mom, Lisa is committed to creating learning spaces and opportunities not only in schools, but in our cities, communities, and everyday conversations.
About Their Idea: CitySchoolista is an online hub offering guidance and support for moms and their kids who are eager to use their city as a prompt for cultural exploration, civic engagement, and leadership development. We use creative messaging on our everyday-use product line, conversation-starter tools, and place-based guides as an accessible entry point to reflecting upon and engaging in critical social justice issues. CitySchoolista is designed to transform how families traditionally tap into the social and educational benefits embedded within their diverse metropolis.
Facebook | LinkedIn | Instagram
Lisa Maria Rhodes | Louisiana
About Lisa: Lisa Maria Rhodes, LMSW, is in year 12 as an educator in New Orleans. A graduate of the University of Miami, Lisa Maria serves as the Director of Alumni Mental Health for Collegiate Academies Next, taught at Abramson Sci Academy in New Orleans East and was a social worker at George Washington Carver. With experience working for Orleans Public Defenders and doing national immigration policy advocacy, Lisa Maria founded & is now the Executive Director of non-profit organization ALAS. Lisa Maria founded New Orleans’ young Colombians group Reunión de la juventud colombiana and the NOLA Educators Support Immigrant Students network.
About Their Idea: ALAS is training current and former students + family members to lead ALAS projects, serve on the board, as well as expand & lead ALAS educator trainings. ALAS removes racial & ethnically discriminatory educational barriers by interrupting school-to-prison & school-to-deportation pipelines. Student and families in ALAS leadership create and deliver trauma informed training for educators to learn how to support students in the criminal legal system, including writing strategic letters to judges in court language as well as supporting immigrant youth by connecting undocumented youth with legal representation.
Facebook | LinkeIn | Instagram
Kim Riley | Missouri
About Kim: Kim Riley is a social entrepreneur based in Kansas City, MO. She has worked extensively in higher education, health care and nonprofits. She founded The Transition Academy in 2019 as a solution to the confusing and poorly-designed postsecondary preparation process for students with disabilities — a problem affecting her families and others like hers. Kim is committed to collaborating with multiple stakeholders across sectors to build a sustainable system that ensures all students, regardless of race/ethnicity and ability, are equipped to become contributing members of society.
About Their Idea: The Transition Academy’s Discovering Personal Genius cohort reimagines college and career preparation and success for black students with disabilities. This holistic approach involves strong partnership with the broader community to develop a sustainable plan for closing the postsecondary success gap between black students with disabilities and their white peers. This real-world learning model will implement best practices and recommendations — bringing state and federal disability agencies directly to students and families at school. As a result, students will leave high school fully prepared with their benefits packages and employment or college options finalized.
Sage Salvo | Washington D.C.
About Sage: Sage Salvo is the social-entrepreneur founder of Words Liive and is also a 2021 Aspen Institute Tech Policy Fellow, 2021 4.0 Schools Alumni Coach, 2020 AfroTech World Finalist, 2020 Harvard Alumni Launch Lab Accelerator Fellow, 2020 Education Pioneers Fellow, 2018 AT&T Aspire Entrepreneur, 2018 Lean-Lab Fellow, 2017 Clinton Global Initiative — Social Entrepreneur, and 2017 Camelback Ventures Fellow. He is also a 2017 graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School where he earned a Master’s degree in Public Administration (MPA) with a focus on Social Innovation.
About Their Idea: For the vast majority of parents and teachers struggling with time-to-prepare engaging and effective literacy lessons to combat the typical ‘summer brain drain’ and the new ‘Covid Slide’, we offer The Opus, a digital platform that systemically integrates the real music students love, via song lyrics, into their reading and writing assignments, with our comprehensive supplemental materials which are auto-generated in just three clicks on Opus!
Flor Serna | Louisiana
About Flor: Flor Serna grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico before moving to New Orleans to pursue a Bachelor’s of Music Technology at Loyola University. After having experienced working as an audio engineer for several years in a male-dominated field, she founded Electric Girls. Flor and her co-founder, Maya, participated in Launch Cohort 11 in 2015, and she has been actively involved in the 4.0 community ever since — as both an Essentials and Tiny coach, a Tiny head coach, a community advisor, and a data analyst.
About Their Idea: Electric Girls is an out of school program that builds girls’ confidence and curiosity in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). When girls join the Electric Girls community, they begin to dismantle their own beliefs about what they are (and are not) capable of. They begin to identify as strong, confident, and capable leaders, and start to see themselves in future careers in science and technology. Electric Girls is a safe, welcoming space where girls can learn with and from each other.
www.electricgirls.org | Facebook | LinkedIn | YouTube | Instagram | Twitter
Natalie Smith | Washington D.C.
About Natalie: Natalie Smith is the Founder and CEO of Global Citizens Public Charter School in Washington, DC. Over the last 20 years, she has served as a teacher, instructional coach, school leader, and leadership coach in local public schools. Previously, Natalie served as Head of School at Sela Public Charter School, a Hebrew language immersion school in Washington, DC, where she led the school to achieve Tier I status. Natalie earned Ph.D. and M.A. degrees from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a B.S. degree from Georgetown University. Natalie is a member of the DC State Superintendent of Education’s Principal Advisory Council.
About Their Idea: Opening in fall 2021, Global Citizens will be the first dual language immersion elementary charter school in DC to provide the top three languages in the world — Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and English. Global Citizens’ free virtual language classes allow young children living in Wards 7 + 8 to have access to language learning opportunities in a safe and nurturing learning environment (even if they are not enrolled in our school). Children are engaged in learning experiences using visuals, songs, books, and hands-on activities. Children receive learning packets, learning packages, and access to technology.
Laura Stein & Chanice Holmes | Louisiana
About Laura: Laura Stein is the co-Founder and Executive Director of Dancing Grounds. She is a passionate advocate, educator, artist, and anti-racist organizer. Her greatest joy comes from dancing and moving in community with people of all ages. Laura has had a 20-year career in public service as a program director, teacher, administrator, and policy analyst in arts and education in New Orleans, New York City, Washington D.C., London, and Phnom Penh, Cambodia. She holds an M.P.A. from New York University and a B.A. from Wesleyan University.
About Chanice: Chanice Holmes is a professional dancer, performer, choreographer, educator, personal fitness trainer, and entrepreneur. Born and raised in New Orleans, she is Dancing Grounds’ Dance for Social Change Program Manager and has served as a teaching artist in DG’s youth and adult programs since 2016. She recently founded her own wellness businesses: Omni Power Fitness and Moms that Move. Chanice received a B.F.A. in Dance from Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia and an M.S. in Kinesiology from Louisiana State University. She recently performed on tour in Europe with internationally acclaimed recording artists, Solange Knowles and Peaches.
About Their Idea: New Orleans youth need safe, creative, nontraditional learning spaces to express how the pandemic has affected them and heal from the social/emotional challenges they’ve experienced throughout the pandemic. “Ya Heard Meh?”, an extension of Dancing Grounds’ Dance for Social Change (DSC) program, is a series of workshops held on Saturdays and school breaks where New Orleans’ youth commune, create, and express their experiences through the arts. At the end of the semester, they present their artwork to parents, educators, and policymakers, sparking a conversation about how we can collectively support young people from a holistic, health-based, anti-racist, pro-liberation perspective.
Facebook | LinkedIn (Laura)| Instagram
LaShaune Stitt | Maryland
About LaShaune: Dr. LaShaune Stitt is an educator with almost 24 years in education, serving in various educational and leadership capacities. Her most treasured accomplishment was as a proposal writer, presenter, and curriculum developer for an all-male high school in the Bronx, NY. Dr. Stitt’s passion for education is driven by the communities she serves and creating a culturally responsive environment for critical thinkers and change agents. Through Educate the World, she has found a new space to uniquely address the obstacles young people face daily by increasing their self-awareness and fostering meaningful relationships in the home, school, and global communities.
About Their Idea: Educate the World, Inc is centered around equitably and emotionally educating Black and brown youth in middle and high school while increasing their self-awareness and fostering meaningful relationships in the home, school, and global communities. Accessibility to academic opportunities and resources for success is what we are providing while preparing them to become leaders and global problem-solvers. This group of mostly disenfranchised youth will be getting the same exposure as their White peers.
Leandra Tejedor and Wilson Waller | New York
About Leandra: Leandra is a founder and educator currently completing her masters at MIT IDM. She’s the co-founder of Vidcode, an award-winning creative coding platform and computer science curriculum for K-12. 4.0 was her first incubator back in 2014, and it changed her life to be around so many inspiring educators solving big problems. Leandra has organized workshops around tech and art around the world, including the Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit, Columbia University Teachers College, Cornell Tech, Processing Day, Creative Coding Fest, and the MIT Media Lab, and has been highlighted in Forbes, Devex, TechCrunch, and EdSurge, and has been listed on Forbes 30 Under 30 in Education. She’s excited to facilitate top hands-on learning experiences this summer.
About Wilson: Wilson Waller is an educator and producer who’s been creating programs combining art, tech, and sustainability for nearly a decade. He has built educational programs by activating outdoor spaces with state of the art technology by upcycling shipping containers into tech labs. During that time he completed a social impact startup accelerator in Memphis. He coordinated partnerships between NBA foundations, schools, and city parks to install makerspaces at outdoor basketball courts for underserved youth to create engaging learning spaces out of shipping containers from his hometown of Memphis to the Himalayas.
About Their Idea: Cyber Arts Camp is a summer technology + art camp for teens who are creative, multidisciplinary, and want to work together to make a difference in the world’s most important moonshots. The Cyber Arts team is engaging students in learning both online and in-person by connecting them with industry experts and recent graduates. Cyber Arts workshops are hands-on and open-ended, allowing students freedom to explore the future’s biggest challenges.
LinkedIn (Wilson) | LinkedIn (Leandra) | Instagram
Laura Thomas | Washington D.C.
About Laura: Laura Thomas, a graduate of UNC — Chapel Hill and Brown University, is the Founder and CEO of Effective to Great Education, an education technology startup developing social emotional learning tools geared for our most vulnerable students. Her upbringing within an education-focused, southern Black American family fostered an early interest in developing habits that would enable her to build and maintain academic achievement and strengthen her self-identity. Laura’s driven interest in performance, intrapersonal and interpersonal development cultivated her life-long mission to support black and brown kids from underserved communities as a mentor, program designer and educational enrichment educator.
LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram
Velma “Rochelle” Thompson | Georgia
About Velma: Velma “Rochelle” Thompson is an educator based in Atlanta, Georgia, where she has taught elementary, middle, and high school for the last twenty plus years. . She is the founder/owner of C.S.I. Educational Services LLC and U.P.L.I.F.T Academy, where she used her community clubhouse to provides teachers, students, and parents in the community with best practices and resources, creating innovative teaching methodology , to improve literacy education in and outside of the classroom. She is excited about using these strategies, to help support student healing during this pandemic using literacy platforms in multiple facades.
About Their Idea: GRAPPY is a community awareness program that helps address the mental wellness issue of grief for children. GRAPPY offers literature based resources to children, parents, families, communities and teachers ,with resources from educational support groups, strategies on how to deal with grief through this intense and chaotic time. These strategies encourages students to write, draw, listen, and talk about their feeling, to possible draw closer to living a happier life again without their love one.
Bahiy Watson | Louisiana
About Bahiy: Bahiy Watson is a mechanical engineer based in New Orleans. He uses his 20+ years of engineering experience to prepare underrepresented populations for careers in engineering and technology through an organization he founded called The 1881 Institute — named after the founding year of his alma mater, Tuskegee University. He founded 1881 to help bridge the income and skills gap among marginalized groups caused by the burgeoning 4th Industrial Revolution.
About Their Idea: The 1881 Institute (1881) bridges 16–24 year-olds to engineering and advanced manufacturing careers by providing participants a paid work experience to learn the fundamentals of design and fabrication. Also due to the high demand for skilled talent in engineering and technology fields, 1881 is enabling teens to do dual-enrollment through 1881’s Independent School to earn a general studies certificate by 10th grade and an engineering-related associate degree with their high school diploma by 12th grade.
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Juontel White | California
About Juontel: i. Juontel White is a social impact advisor based in Los Angeles, CA. She has worked for 10 years supporting school districts, nonprofits and foundations to fuel racial equity for Black youth. She has launched and scaled out-of-school programs, policy campaigns and public-private partnerships for youth throughout the U.S. (including Los Angeles, New York and Boston) and countries in West Africa and Caribbean. Juontel is dedicated to advocating for culturally sustaining spaces for Black youth to feel seen and empowered. She founded Afropassport in 2019, a youth travel program providing experiential cultural learning and leadership development for Black youth.
About Their Idea: Afropassport — Virtual Journey is a project of Afropassport, which provides educational travel throughout the Afro Diaspora for Black youth. Afropassport programs challenge and inspire Black youth to become globally conscious leaders. Afropassport — Virtual Journey is a virtual program that engages Black middle and high school youth in experiential learning about a country in the Afro Diaspora. Each virtual journey include guest speakers, food demonstrations, and peer exchange and collaboration to deepen empathy and understanding of self, others and our world.
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Candice Wilson-McCain | North Carolina
About Candice: Candice Wilson-McCain is an education consultant and the founder of Fly Math Club, a math-based leadership development program with a mission to strengthen girls’ math identity by building their confidence and competence using financial literacy infused activities. With over 13 years of experience in K-12 education, Candice has served as a math teacher, instructional coach, after-school program director, curriculum designer, and professional development specialist. She believes all children deserve the best education possible regardless of their background, so they can have the opportunity to pursue the career of their dreams. Candice is currently pursuing a doctorate in education degree.
About Their Idea: Financial Literacy for Youth (FLY) Math Collective equips families of students in grades 3rd-5th to close the math and financial literacy gap by boosting their girls’ confidence and competence through authentic project-based tasks. Students will engage in experiential learning adventures where they explore age-appropriate math and financial literacy topics. We provide parents/caring adults with turn-key real-world extended learning activities through short lesson guides to complete with their children to enhance understanding and a community of families to share their experiences.
Sinclair Wu | California
About Sinclair: Passionate about unlocking potential in all youth, Sinclair Wu is an educator and youth program leader with a bias for action. He has tutored students and taught after-school programs since high school, co-founded an education nonprofit, and served on the board of several others. Over the past fifteen years, he has also honed skills in technology, leading diverse teams at startups and global enterprises. Combining the best of both these worlds — education and technology — Sinclair collaborates with students and educators to co-design apps that propel and inspire learners from all backgrounds.
About Their Idea: Maybe you too know teens who’ll say things like, “I’m not a math person.” or “I just can’t do math.” RightOn!’s mission is to inspire learning by embracing mistakes and unlock every student’s potential in STEM: building self-confidence, developing conceptual understanding, and fostering growth mindsets. Based on cognitive science research, RightOn! is a culturally-responsive mobile platform that enables educators to engage students in thinking about and discussing misconceptions in math — in turn creating more entry points for students at different levels, encouraging collaboration with peers, and enabling more students to see that they too can excel in math.
