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The Sacramento Bee and Nehemiah Leaders Programs are celebrating this year’s 60 Change Makers. Join them at our gala at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 13 at the Grand Sheraton in downtown Sacramento. Buy tickets at sacramentochangemakers.com.
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Michaela Edwards had ambitious goals, including becoming a United Nations ambassador, because she had always wanted to “change the world.” At 19, while a sophomore at the University of the Pacific, Edwards completed a year of AmeriCorps service as a mentor fellow with Improve Your Tomorrow.
IYT mentors young men of color from middle school through college, building relationships and guiding students toward their academic and college goals, Edwards said. For Edwards, the through line has been watching students she began mentoring years ago progress along that path.
“I could still change the world, just on a different scale,” Edwards said.
After finishing her service year, Edwards returned to IYT as a mentor in its community college program. Three months later, she applied to become a program manager. The organization had few women on staff at the time, Edwards said, and placing a woman in that role was “kind of unheard of.”
She got the job.
When Edwards joined the organization, its mentors had no shared playbook to guide their work. She created one that starts with relationship building and wellness check-ins before turning to students’ academic goals. That approach became a foundation for training staff.
“We wanted to make sure that we are rooted in students who are the least served and the more likely to be overlooked because they don’t have the quote-unquote college profile,” Edwards said.
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Edwards said she often points to one former mentee — not because his was the program’s most conventional success story, but because his progress could easily be overlooked.
She met the student when he was a high school sophomore who frequently missed class and said college was not for him. Edwards developed a close relationship with him, but after she changed roles at IYT, the program lost contact with him for about a year. Then, at 17, he texted Edwards after leaving jail to say he wanted to go to college and to ask for her help.
Edwards helped him make up the credits he needed to graduate within a matter of weeks, then enroll in community college while working.
“It’s so easy to hold on to the success stories — those who went through and have already graduated with their bachelor’s and in their careers,” Edwards said. “When I think about the tough-of-the-tough stories in the uphill battle that we have with our students, that one always sits with me because I do take it as, not necessarily a failure, but it pushes me to want to then push the organization that we can continue to get better.”
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