Our Core Program: Yleana Leadership Academy

Our flagship program, the Yleana Leadership Academy, is a summer experience at Colgate University and Mount Holyoke College which is part [1] college access experience (yes! I - and students like me - belong at college!), part [2] elite SAT prep  (the top 50% of kids increase 140-360 points in 119 hours of prep!) and part [3] college persistence skills like critical thinking, perspective-taking, self-advocacy, real world professional skills, creativity/imagination - and the ability to meet BIPOC/HM mentors (through Imagination Workshops - career exposure - and our Entrepreneurship One-Day Startup Fair, the cap on every Yleana session). At those sessions, Yleana's Eight Pillars work together to create a space that not only focuses on college access and persistence, but gives us space to create a loving safe space that concentrates on the whole person.

We are emphatically NOT a creaming organization; we take kids all over the academic curve (from a 0.7 to a 5.3 GPA historically), but in order to make systematic change, we serve the thick middle (68%) of the academic bell curve. We believe that if you need to get to college, we want to support you in getting into the best one possible, to minimize loans and maximize salary on the other end. Raising your SAT score 130-180 points is a transformational shift in terms of the colleges that will accept you; it will significantly change your post-college financial outcomes.

After the summer of Yleana Leadership Academy, we make sure students get TO and THROUGH college to make it to the finish line:

• family support

• college graduation

• better financial aid packages = starting life with less debt

• double and triple starting salaries

To College: College Access Mentoring Program

Since 2014, we have run a volunteer College Access Mentoring Program for our high school seniors / recent Yleana Leadership Academy alums. We work with mentors - Yleana alums, teachers, and other folks familiar with the college application process - who are physically or digitally available to help students with the application process to college, with financial aid forms, with choosing a college, when staying in college/managing the transition to college, and with graduating successfully.  

Parents can’t always answer the questions that students have or help them with the specific processes they have to go through - they just don’t always know the answers or the “right” things to do. We guide mentors to act as another pair of eyes, provide extra oversight through the college application process, reassure and give estimates/broad strokes of “what it will be like", organize application-related and scholarship-finding tasks into actionable timelines, and check in and make sure those timelines are being followed. Our mentors help our students:

• fill out the Common App

• write the college essay

• create lists of targets/reaches/safeties, using Naviance/scattergrams as available, and evaluate financial utility of the schools to which they’re applying

  • net price calculator

  • schools that meet 100% of need

  • no-loan schools

  • profiles of similar students with similar financial situations at those schools

• maintain/manage Common App deadlines

• get teacher recommendations

• Research scholarships - both regional (little potatoes with high likelihood of winning) and national (big $$ but much harder to get)

• help parents with financial aid forms like

  • FAFSA

  • CSS profile

  • other scholarship and financial aid-related forms

Through College -> Graduation: College Success Mentoring Program

The Yleana Leadership Foundation’s College Success Mentoring Program, set to launch in spring 2022, will support our alums in navigating the transition to higher education; addressing academic, professional, and social issues throughout their college years; and, ultimately, persisting to graduation. 

The College Success Mentoring Program will complete our portfolio of offerings for alums, serving as a key connective piece to support our students throughout their years in college. Alums will be matched with mentors in the summer before their freshman year in college to help ease the transition to college life, or can start at any point during their college process when they recognize that they need a little (or a lot of!) help. Mentors will commit to supporting alums throughout their college experience, including:

• managing shifting financial aid and scholarships (which may change year to year)

• course selection

• declaring and picking a major

• making sure they are on track to graduate and their classes count towards their major/graduation/core requirements

• navigating being a person of color at a PWI (predominantly white institution) by identifying safe spaces/community/affinity groups/houses

• coming back from time off

• dealing with administration

• taking leave

• taking advantage of mental health and academic support

• juggling making money with studying

Yleana’s college success/persistence curriculum, developed as part of the mentoring program, will provide resources for mentors and mentees to utilize throughout the course of their mentorship relationship. Program curriculum will be developed in collaboration with and utilizing feedback from internal and external stakeholders, including Board/YYPC/RLC members, current and incoming mentors, and college persistence professionals.

Starting a Career: College —> Career Transitional Mentorship Program

Our College to Career Transitional Mentorship Program, launched in Spring 2021 by our Young Professionals’ Council, guides our college students and recent college grads through the transition to careers, supported by volunteer mentors in careers similar to those our students are seeking. Mentors strive to help students answer questions like "I have this degree - now what?”, “What does my degree equal in terms of a job?”, and “How do I apply for this job?” Mentor/mentee pairs can either meet in person or virtually and are encouraged to meet as a pair at least once a month, guided by a comprehensive curriculum including:

• Career ideation

• Building a resume

• Interviewing skills

• Looking for and applying for jobs

• Weighing different job offers

• Negotiating your offer

• Crafting a LinkedIn profile

• Sending cold emails

• Shaping a career story

• Navigating the workplace culture and expectations

• How to succeed/develop relationships in the workplace

Mentor/mentee pairs can meet for a short period of time, focusing on a specific goal (i.e. interview prep or landing an internship), or form a long-term relationship to bridge the transition from college to career, discussing the longer arc of a career trajectory.

Since launching one year ago, we have successfully matched over 25 mentor-mentee pairs and have hosted a number of career readiness workshops (see Events Series below for more information).

Support: Events Series

Yleana Leadership Foundation's event series is intended to prepare students for the professional world through workshops that focus on a variety of career readiness topics, including perfecting your elevator pitch, preparing your professional materials (resume, cover letter, LinkedIn profile, etc.), networking, and the basics of searching and applying for jobs and internships. Typically, our career readiness events fall into three categories:

• Skills Workshops (interview practice, resume crafting, etc.)

• Career Insight Workshops (exploring different professions - and common issues that arise in these jobs - through the eyes of a professional in the field.)

• Higher Education and Industry Panels (looking into the process for applying to graduate school, exploring pursuing a career in a particular field, etc.)

Resources: Jobs/Internships/Opportunities Database

Yleana offers an internal jobs/internships/opportunities database to serve our alums through college and beyond. This database, launched at the beginning of 2022, provides a repository of opportunities - including jobs, internships, fellowships, workshops, and events - for our alums. Whenever possible, these opportunities include a personal Yleana connection/referral so that alums have a point of contact when applying for a specific opportunity.