1. What was one lesson you learned from college?

Being flexible and building relationships. Professors are in the roles they’re in because they love sharing knowledge. Building a relationship with somebody who wants to share that kind of knowledge is so special. For more shy and introverted students, it can be a long road learning that lesson, but they're always so glad when they do.

2. What do you like most about your job as executive director of Lynchburg Beacon of Hope?

I love getting to watch students launch to their next place. We have so many different kinds of students that come from different places here in Lynchburg. For the last ten years, I’ve seen that students rarely have a linear pathway. A lot of the times the pathways are squiggly, and it's really special to see kids pop out of the squiggles and launch into the real world successfully. I’ve enjoyed seeing them figure out how to navigate their own challenges and then come back to help other students and pay it forward.

3. Can you describe what the Future Centers are, for those who may not know?

The Future Centers are privately funded spaces within the walls of our high schools. We have two in Lynchburg, one in each of our public schools. They serve as a hub for anything a student would do after high school. We like to think of them as an urgent care facility for your future, where you don't even need a diagnosis to come in. You can drop by for 15 minutes and either get a prescription that lays out your next steps, or make an appointment to come back. We work alongside our school counselors and administrators to assist students with college applications, the FAFSA, SAT prep, college board exams, and more. We also help students think about what they're good at and what their assets are through career inventories.

4. What are a few of the ways the Future Centers have helped students?

The Future Centers have evolved over the last ten years. For the first year, the Future Centers focused on helping seniors navigate their final year of high school. In the second year, we did all kinds of work with students in grades 9-12 and families in the community centers. Within a year, we recognized middle school is a place where a lot of students make decisions that can affect their future, whether it's not doing well on classes that count toward their high school GPA, or making behavioral decisions that might negatively impact them. To tackle this problem, we created a range of programs in the middle schools, and one of these is a college symposium where every year, 8th graders get to visit a college campus. In 2019, we launched the Stay Close, Go Far Scholarship, which is the first Promise program in Virginia. With this program, we raised enough private money so every student who graduates from Lynchburg City Schools can either go to community college for free or receive an $8,000 scholarship to attend one of our local partner colleges. A scholarship is great, but the Future Centers help shepherd students through the application process, which is by far the most important part of what they do – helping to solve problems.

5. What inspired the Future Centers Expansion GO Virginia project?

We had initially operated the Future Centers exclusively in the city of Lynchburg. The project was designed to help expand opportunity for Lynchburg City School kids and we kept finding success. The program caught the attention of people across the state, and we ended up talking to some folks in Richmond. We believe all students should benefit from this kind of opportunity and we recognize kids all over the state need help. We helped Richmond get started with the Future Centers back in 2015, and some of the folks connected with the GO Virginia council heard about it and suggested adopting the Future Centers model for all county schools. We thought we could help save communities years of trial and error and share what we’ve learned from the process. Through this project, we are testing what we've learned in Lynchburg and figuring out what works in places with different demographics.

6. What have you accomplished with the project so far?

We have worked to develop the Future Centers with superintendents in Lynchburg, Amherst County, and Altavista. All three of our local Future Center models are funded differently and operate differently, so we're able to learn what works and what doesn't. What we are seeing at the initial outset is it doesn't matter where our students come from or whether they're first generation or not: kids and families need a lot of help in navigating what comes next after high school. We've learned a nonprofit partner is a key ingredient at each of the sites, because there are so many discretionary items including field trips to college campuses and mini grant programs that help pay for an extra SAT or a residential deposit. We’ve also learned it’s essential to get involved early with a strategic plan and work to understand the DNA of the community you’re in. We needed to put each community’s superintendent, principal, director of school counseling, and Future Center director in the same room, and make sure everyone was on the same page when we started. Our final product will be a playbook, and we’re still deciding what it will look like. We’re thinking it could function as a ‘choose your own adventure’ kind of playbook, that is malleable for whatever the community needs. There's a lot of diversity in our region, so it's going to be fun to see what can work in places.

7. What is your favorite part of being a GO Virginia grantee?

GO Virginia has provided an incredible support structure. We love you guys down in Blacksburg, from Elli Travis who came down and ran these amazing evaluation workshops for us, to the team working on keeping us up to date on the grants and shepherding us through the reimbursement process. All of the logistics of granting have been easy. But the best part is the GO Virginia team on the Region 2 council, who jumped in feet first, believed in what we were talking about, and gave us the wings to try to figure it out.

8. What advice would you give to a student who wasn’t sure what they wanted to do for a career?

All Virginia colleges have incredible career development resources, so start there to discover your assets. The earlier you get started, the better. Very few of us know what we want to be when we grow up. And I'm not even sure I know what I want to be when I grow up. So be open to the experiences. We look at a lot of asset mapping, and we encourage our students to explore, so don't be afraid to try something. At the very least, you're going to learn what you don't like. That's part of why we launched the Stay Close, Go Far scholarship because we believe everybody should have the opportunity to go to college if they want to. Cost should not be a barrier that stops a student from exploring how far they can go.

9. What hobbies do you like to do in your spare time?

I'm a private pilot; I fly airplanes for fun. I got my private pilot's license about 22 years ago. It's the fastest, most fun, utilitarian hobby you can get, so my family and I fly a lot. I'm a big snowboarder and cross-country skier. I've got three awesome children and a great husband, so we are chasing kids to a lot of sporting events these days. I also referee and coach lacrosse.

10. If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?

I would love to go to Australia or New Zealand. I have never been on that side of the world. I hear you can see every possible temperate zone in the country of New Zealand in one trip. I think that would be a really cool place to visit.