Reimagine Alumni Support So It Works for All Students

I was a kid from Harlem, a first generation immigrant, and the first in my family to graduate from college – the U.S. education system was not built for kids like me to succeed.

Thankfully, along the way, I got the support I needed to excel and live out the dreams that my parents had for me as well as the aspirations I had for myself. Sadly, that is not the reality for countless kids from underserved communities just like me. But it can be, if we start to reimagine the support systems around them.

My parents left Ecuador with the hope that they could create a better future for their children, and they believed an American education was key to this. My father dreamed of having one of his children attend an Ivy League school. It felt out of reach, but all of that changed when my mom saw an advertisement for a new school in our neighborhood, and slowly but surely, their dream started to come true.

In 2005, my parents enrolled me as one of the first 100 students at KIPP Infinity Middle School in Harlem, a decision that changed my life. I stayed with the KIPP network of public charter schools through high school and then even more doors of opportunity were opened. During my time at KIPP, I traveled throughout New England to visit potential colleges, including Yale and Harvard, embarked on a 10-day excursion to Utah to hike Arches, Bryce, and Zion National Park, and visited China…

KIPP Forward, the alumni support program that sticks with KIPP students once they graduate high school, helped guide me in college and helped me find a job post-graduation through peer and employer networking events, such as the KIPP Alumni Summit. For my friends who did not attend KIPP, any guidance many of my friends were receiving stopped the day they graduated high school.

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