Our mission is to decrease the opportunity gap...so the things that happened to the real Yleana will never happen to anyone else.
When Elda Yleana Arce came to the United States in 1975, she was told that she should reconsider her dream of being a doctor. As a Latina immigrant, she listened to people tell her that no white patients would want her, so no hospitals would either. She proved them wrong by becoming the head of the Adolescent Medicine Clinic at Children’s National Medical Center. It is in her memory that her son, Daniel Hammond, named the Yleana Leadership Foundation - and it is in her honor that we serve students every day.
At the Yleana Leadership Foundation, we see the racial wealth gap (economic/wealth accumulation) as a consequence of the opportunity gap (education). Our mission is to decrease the opportunity gap in order to decrease the racial wealth gap - by making sure students have access to the best resources possible as they enter college, we will change their economic position and ability to accumulate wealth as adults.
Through a series of intentional college-related financial decisions, this change to the middle of the economic curve has the power to ultimately move the center of the US economic pyramid - and by moving the middle incrementally, we can have the longest-ranging and broadest impact on the income distribution of the United States.
That’s what creates the Yleana magic - the 710-point SAT score increases; the partner organizations who tell us their students are changed forever and for good; the students who cry at the end of every session when it’s time to go home; the ones who say that even eight years after coming to Yleana, they’re still in touch with Alyssa and text her on her birthday to tell her they’ll never forget Yleana.
The real Yleana saw the import of education both in her own life and in her father’s: He grew up an orphan on the streets of Lima, Peru, and was taken in by a wealthy businessman. That businessman sent Yleana’s dad to school, transforming his economic prospects. Fervently, with every fiber of her being, Yleana believed in education and its transformative power.
We honor her belief in education, in kids, in love, in strength every day when we continue to improve our curriculum, when we actively work to decrease the opportunity gap, when we put mental health at the center of what we do. It is an honor and a privilege to know that every day, we serve in the memory of this warmhearted, loving, striving, and hardworking doctor, mother, daughter, wife, and friend.
We are so proud to say her name every day - “Yleana” - and in doing so, pay homage to everything she believed! <3