Nyah Project

I attended university, law school, study abroad in Switzerland and France, and executive leadership programs at Harvard Business School and Columbia Business School for free. I would otherwise owe $350,000 in student loan debt. A clear strategy and systematic approach was the secret to my success. 

 My journey with college access started with a man named Larry Jenkins who founded the Thurston Group of Washington State.  He taught me and my mother what we needed to strategically package my genius to make it easy for colleges to not only admit me but also offer me full scholarships.  He also helped negotiate a full ride scholarships for myself, my sister and hundreds of BIPOC youth. 

For the past 10 years I have privately coached students for free to develop a personal strategy for college admissions, including every Nyah Project fellow with a 100% success rate.

Now more than ever, I recognize the critical role that disruptive social innovation and the exponential enabling power of technology play in bridging opportunity gaps in access to higher education. Nyah Project is paying Larry’s legacy forward.

The Elevate platform, training, network and funding will support us in expanding Access Online to three new cities.

I founded Nyah Project in 2014  because I wanted to provide more than ad hoc resume and interview workshops to the BIPOC youth I mentored.  Initially, it was a program designed to expose students to leadership based travel experience that I hoped would  bolster our fellows college essays and increase their chances of getting scholarships to college. 

The concept worked. 100% of Nyah Fellows attend college and over 95% win scholarships — accumulating over $10 million in scholarships since 2014. And, over 95% of our fellows attribute their Nyah Project experience as critical to their successful college matriculation and empowerment to achieve their personal goals.  

2020 reaffirmed how much systemic inequities limit exposure, access, and opportunities available to BIPOC youth from disadvantaged backgrounds.

One question kept resurfacing as we took time during the pandemic to revisit our model:  How can we serve more youth ?

We realized that if coupled with technology, our proven model for college admissions strategy coaching could have exponential impact.  We launched Access Online, a EdTech SAAS platform that offers on-demand college strategy coaching.  In 5 months, we 2x our reach and are on track to 20x the number of students served in 2021.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports 66.2% of graduating high school youth enroll in college, those rates drop to 50.7% and 63.4% for Black and Hispanic students, respectively. 

The “test optional” admissions trend exacerbates barriers disadvantaged BIPOC youth face, which include an unaffordable private coaching ($10,000 at $200 average per hour); disproportionate enrollment at schools with low or no student-to-college counselor ratios; as well as over-indexing in first generation students.

Within the $2 billion college admissions industry, existing online resources do not provide skills based or strategic support. Technology is used to reduce friction in the application process (Common App, Coalition), or provide databases for scholarship awareness (Scholar Snap).  What’s more, most school districts do not provide a comprehensive college admission strategy curriculum beyond subsidized SAT preparation or compliance checklists.

Access Online leverages mindset coaching, interactive exercises, video-based instruction, and validated learning objectives.  It consists of 10+ course modules, 40+ individual video lessons, and over 40 hands-on practice tools and guides that equip students to develop an effective college admission and scholarship application strategy.

Technology enables us to provide the same high quality content as private coaches at <10% market rate (approximately $500 per user).

Access Online is a technology platform designed to create educational equity.  USDOE Office for Civil Rights data demonstrates, underrepresented students need more than a “check the box” prep list; they need a proven strategy for college admission.  AO teaches students how to navigate the actual barriers to higher education that others ignore.  

PROVIDER FOCUSED: AO serves students but is built with YOPs in mind. It contains a custom dashboard to track and engage associated student users’ progress as well as resource streamlining, cost savings (eliminates the need to hire a full time college readiness instructor), dedicated live AO support, a robust reporting infrastructure and more.

INCLUSIVE UX/UI: AO is designed for experiential learning that caters to all VARK learning styles, includes an online membership peer interaction and expert support, as well as content that builds capacity around strategic decision making, mental models for professional skill sets and tools to devise individualized admissions and scholarship action plans.

DATA: Existing USBOL data does not disaggregate for locality or by state. School districts do not report college matriculation rates. AO will provide a new class of data insights regarding the unique needs of underserved populations to inform stakeholders who set student outcomes.

The recent college admissions scandal revealed what we all know to be true, the education pipeline is operating as it was designed.  Despite sweeping reforms and investment from the P3 sectors, higher education was never designed to be accessible for BIPOC students.  If it were, there would be no need for HBCUs or minority serving institutions, nor would Carter G. Woodson’s “Miseducation of the Negro” offer insights that apply 88 years later. While talent is equally distributed, it’s by no accident that opportunity is not.

Success is simple: all BIPOC students from disadvantaged backgrounds can matriculate to college at the same rate as their counterparts, and they will be armed with the skills and knowledge to secure scholarships to attend post-secondary institutions for free (or heavily subsidized).

We are disrupting structural racism and systemic inequities that prevent BIPOC youth from equal access to educational mobility. Specifically (1) gatekeeping access to higher education to limit BIPOC socioeconomic mobility, (2) an educational pipeline not designed to push students into higher education but rather into prison or low-wage jobs, (3) lack of effective resources for critical skills development (vs. standardized test preparation), and (4) unlocking scholarship dollars as a springboard out of poverty.