Building STEM through Whole Girl Education

A constellation of factors impedes young people from underserved communities from realizing their fullest potential. They are often at a significant disadvantage in accessing higher education compared to their wealthier peers. Nationally, only 46% of graduating seniors from high-poverty schools enroll in college, a gap exacerbated by the pandemic. Furthermore, millions of students eligible for financial aid do not complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), leaving billions of essential dollars on the table. These trends exacerbate disparities in college access, particularly for students of color and first-generation college students. The implications of declining college enrollment have severe consequences. According to a 2022 analysis by the New America Foundation, the wage difference between college and high school graduates has grown since the start of the pandemic. Additionally, four-year college graduates occupy a growing share of the economy's "good jobs" (paying at least $17 an hour), according to Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce.

Furthermore, traditional schools have centered on boys' experiences, even though female students tend to achieve higher grades and test scores than their male counterparts. Student Leadership Network’s Whole Girl Education framework builds essential competencies (like leadership, growth mindset, and self-advocacy) through rigorous education in leadership, health & wellness, college access, and STEM that allow students to thrive in and succeed beyond college. 

Girls from underserved communities experience a notable gap in exposure to STEM skills and competencies. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment in STEM occupations is projected to grow by 8.2% from 2019 to 2029, significantly faster than the average for all occupations. This growth is on top of the high demand for STEM workers in various industries, including technology, healthcare, and manufacturing. Yet women and people of color have been historically underrepresented in STEM fields, given the lack of training and exposure. SL Network's STEM programming is unique in marrying academic, social-emotional, and leadership development opportunities, yielding impressive results: nearly all TYWLS students are accepted into college, alumnae are four times more likely to obtain a four-year degree than their peers nationally, and they pursue STEM majors at 1.5 times the rate of girls nationally.

Our country’s failure to make college and the most desirable and lucrative careers available to young people in certain groups reinforces entrenched systems of inequality. At a September 2022 event, Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation, commended SL Network’s efforts, describing higher education as a vital “mobility escalator” central to attaining the American Dream and lamenting that too many young people see this escalator stalled or even moving backward. At SL Network, we are committed to making this critical pathway available so that the talent and promise of every young person, regardless of demographic or zip code, can be fully realized. 

Since 1996, Student Leadership Network has worked tirelessly to dismantle the gender, racial, and socioeconomic inequities that students from underserved communities face as they strive to achieve their highest potential. We understand the transformative impact of a college education as one of the surest paths to economic mobility and have helped nearly 72,000 students access life-changing programs that put them squarely on a path to postsecondary success and expanded life choices. We serve students from all backgrounds and genders from underserved communities through a nationwide network of 46 public schools, including 24 girls' schools, and an innovative district-wide model to create transformational college access and leadership programs at scale.

Our work in Girls’ Education began in 1996 when we opened The Young Women’s Leadership School (TYWLS) of East Harlem, the first public all-girls school to open in the United States in 30 years. Today, TYWLS are a network of six all-girls public secondary schools (6th-12th grades) that provide a single-gender, college preparatory choice to nearly 2,600 students from underserved communities in New York City. TYWLS are open to girls and gender-expansive youth of all academic abilities who aspire to post-secondary education. According to an independent program evaluation, almost 100% of TYWLS students are accepted into college, are four times more likely to attain a four-year college degree than their peers nationally, and pursue STEM majors at 1.5 times the rate of girls across the country. The TYWLS “whole girl” model unites comprehensive college and career awareness, collaborative and real-world learning in STEM, and social-emotional support. This model has inspired single-gender public schools to open nationwide, forming the Young Women’s Leadership Network, which operates seven schools in six states, and the Young Women’s Preparatory Network, a network of eleven schools in Texas. 

Our programming supports young women from underserved communities, particularly those of color, in overcoming barriers to success perpetuated by generations of racism and oppression. Even though college is a critical driver of economic mobility in the United States, students from underrepresented communities and students of color are frequently excluded from higher education, especially in STEM fields, and do not earn a college degree. At TYWLS, 90% of students come from diverse backgrounds and identify as BIPOC. SL Network provides our students with challenging college preparation and in- and out-of-classroom STEM experiences to enrich their educational journey and pique their interest in STEM fields. Our approach is individualized, affirms all students' identities, embraces diversity, and is executed and assessed through an equity lens to ensure that our efforts benefit all students, regardless of their demographic characteristics.

Student Leadership Network reaches students from underserved communities by partnering with high-need (Title One) public secondary schools in some of New York City’s most marginalized neighborhoods across the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens. Student demographic data from our TYWLS students are as follows: over 80% qualify for their school’s Free or Reduced Lunch Program; 44% are Hispanic, 26% are Black, 19% are Asian, 5% white; 1% identify as a race category not represented by those previously listed; and 1% are White.

The importance of our mission—to foster leadership potential and make college possible for more students from underrepresented populations—is even more acute following the pandemic. Increasingly, young people from historically marginalized backgrounds are seeing their prospects shrink and do not pursue a post-secondary degree, given the enormous challenges they face. These students benefit significantly from the academic, social, and economic doors that college opens. When allowed, our students distinguish themselves as leaders and influential contributors in college and beyond, helping strengthen our society in the 21st century. Our decades of work in New York City and nationally allows us to understand the significant barriers students face and our ability to offer transformational interventions to prepare them to be changemakers in society. Graduates from our programs have already distinguished themselves as leaders in diverse fields, from medicine, science, and education, to business and the arts. We know that there is infinitely more talent and potential to be unlocked. The very health and prosperity of our communities, and our country, depend on it.

In February 2023, The New York Times featured The Young Women’s Leadership School of the Bronx for the cutting-edge education one of our teachers, Marisa Shuman, provides to our students regarding a hotly debated technical advance: ChatGPT and artificial intelligence. Ms. Shuman was featured for her unique approach and how she has incorporated it to improve students' critical lens: “Across the United States, universities and school districts are scrambling to get a handle on new chatbots that can generate humanlike texts and images. But while many are rushing to ban ChatGPT to try to prevent its use as a cheating aid, teachers like Ms. Shuman are leveraging the innovations to spur more critical classroom thinking. They encourage their students to question the hype around rapidly evolving artificial intelligence tools and consider the technologies’ potential side effects.” Innovative approaches to education that inspire critical thinking help our students reach their full potential. When we invest in quality education, we provide our students with a transformative learning environment that breaks down barriers and gives them the tools to navigate and contribute to the world and fulfill their dreams. 

Student Leadership Network provides teachers and principals with the highest quality professional development and learning opportunities. We continuously gather input from educators to ensure that we deliver relevant content and reinforce best practices from our Whole Girl Education pedagogy. Survey responses and testimonials measure each service offering, and we continuously debrief with school leadership to improve delivery. This rigorous feedback loop is in place for all student-facing programming and partnership efforts, and we strive to achieve an 80% (or higher) satisfaction rate across our programming. This feedback cycle ensures that we deliver solutions and services that are most impactful to our students. 

Yolonda Marshall (CEO) joined Student Leadership Network as the organization's first Chief Operating Officer and was promoted to Chief Executive Officer sixteen months later. Before SL Network, Yolonda worked for New Leaders, Inc. as their Deputy Chief Officer for Regional Programs for four years. While at New Leaders, Yolonda led national program implementation, including delivery, assessment of partner needs, critical role requirements, client engagement, and financial sustainability, amongst other responsibilities. Before working at New Leaders, Yolonda served as Vice President for National Corporate Relations for Teach for America, where she also spent six years in various roles of increasing responsibility, including Senior Managing Director, where she assisted in the development of regional strategic plans and provided executive coaching to senior leaders across six distinct regions. She also served as Interim Executive Director for Teach for America in Philadelphia. Before her work in nonprofit education, Yolonda had a prolific career in the private sector, where she held various sales and marketing roles for Showtime Networks, Inc., including Vice President, Key Account Marketing. Yolonda holds a BS degree in Marketing from Tuskegee University and an MBA from Columbia University.

Laura Rebell Gross is the Senior Managing Director of Girls’ Education for the Young Women’s Leadership Network (YWLN), which serves thousands of girls through six New York City-based all-girls public schools and seven national affiliates. As a leader in the education field for the last twenty years, Ms. Gross implements a vision for developing innovative programs that enrich girls’ lives, create experiential leadership opportunities, and build a path to college.  Ms. Gross’s expertise is widely recognized and has been honored by Jewish Women International and The Center for the Women of New York. She is a national speaker and expert on Girls’ public education.  To impact girls' lives beyond New York City, Laura co-founded the Young Women’s Charter Prep School of Rochester, a public school serving low-income girls, and takes the lead in identifying and establishing new school affiliates nationwide. Notably, Ms. Gross’s path to leadership started as a public school teacher, including serving as an English teacher at SL Network’s flagship school in East Harlem for six years.  Ms. Gross earned a BA from Tufts University, an MAT from Brown University, and has completed coursework toward an Ed. D. in Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University and the Warner School, University of Rochester.

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Funding from Solve will enable Student Leadership Network to continue providing high-quality programming and instruction across our TYWLS schools. TYWLS are guided by the overarching goal of equipping young women with the skills, confidence, and resources to thrive in college and beyond. By supporting the “whole girl,” TYWLS seeks to maximize academic achievement, social-emotional well-being, and postsecondary success. By approaching learning in a dynamic, participatory fashion, students are motivated to learn and are equipped with educational opportunities that support and inspire the female leaders of tomorrow by focusing on four core pillars:

1) Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math (STEAM): Our schools are purposefully provided with a rigorous academic track and extracurricular programming in STEAM—science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics, emphasizing computer science.  

2) Early College and Career Awareness: Our programs allow students to interact with professionals from various fields. We also introduce a full-time CollegeBound Initiative Director of College Counseling to students as early as 6th grade.

3) Leadership Development: Our leadership programming provides the platform for students to learn to respect themselves and others, strive for personal and academic excellence, and commit to service that effects positive social change. 

4) Health & Wellness: We focus on delivering programs and professional development that enhance our students’, teachers’, and administrators’ understanding of nutrition, emotional well-being, trauma recovery, and physical fitness. 

Through these core areas, students can access dozens of in- and out-of-school enrichment opportunities that deepen their learning, broaden their exposure, and strengthen their self-esteem. We support our students through various programs and partnerships that enhance students’ academic success by leveraging the expertise of partners, including READ Alliance, Christodora, For Us Girls Foundation’s C for Coding, Girls Leadership, Willie Mae Rock Camp, Ivy Key, Manhattan Theatre Club, Riley’s Way, Harnisch Foundation’s Funny Girls program, City Parks Foundation’s Seeds to Trees program, Active Plus, My Robin, Girls Leadership, Step Up Women’s Network, STEM for Dance, and the Child Mind Institute. Support will help us maintain these transformative partnerships essential to our students’ academic and social-emotional success. 

Furthermore, our Whole Girl Education framework is based on nearly thirty years of collective experience and steeped in classroom observation and the latest academic research in girls’ development. We boast significant outcomes in terms of college enrollment and STEM degree attainment. Still, we seek to understand better the specific inputs that lead to shorter and longer-term outcomes among our students. With support from Solve, we would like to understand better which inputs impact our students’ outcomes.

Education has played a significant role in Yolonda’s life and changed the trajectory of her entire family. Her parents grew up in poverty in the segregated South, where they drank from separate water fountains, learned from secondhand books with pages missing, and could not eat from certain restaurants. 

Neither her maternal or paternal grandparents were formally educated. Yet, they understood its value and insisted that their children focus on their education, even if that meant studying with kerosene lamps because they didn’t have electricity. Yolonda’s father was one of 12 children, and seven of those children went on to earn college degrees—a significant accomplishment given the poor conditions under which they lived. Yolonda’s mother was an only child whose parents saved all their money to send her to college. 

Yolonda’s parents eventually earned graduate degrees together and began their careers in education. Her father retired as a public school assistant principal after serving as both a teacher and a college administrator. After spending many years as a reading specialist, her mother served as a college administrator, led a college placement program, and then had a prolific business career. These are the shoulders upon which Yolonda stands, and their commitment to education was a powerful model for her. 

Things came full circle for Yolonda around the crisis that continues to exist in the United States regarding educating children, especially children of color. Children growing up in marginalized communities continue to be disadvantaged primarily because of the cumulative effects of structural racism: the underinvestment in education, housing, and community development. Yolonda has dedicated the past 15 years to making a difference in the lives of children by working for organizations committed to leveling the playing field for these future leaders.  

After a media career holding various sales and marketing roles for Showtime Networks, Inc., Yolonda transitioned to education in 2008. She joined Student Leadership Network as the organization's first Chief Operating Officer in 2018 and was promoted to Chief Executive Officer sixteen months later. Before SL Network, she worked for New Leaders, Inc. as their Deputy Chief Officer for Regional Programs for four years. While at New Leaders, she led national program implementation, including delivery, assessment of partner needs, critical role requirements, client engagement, and financial sustainability, amongst other responsibilities. Before working at New Leaders, she served as Vice President for National Corporate Relations for Teach for America, where she also spent six years in various roles of increasing responsibility, including Senior Managing Director, where she assisted in the development of regional strategic plans and provided executive coaching to senior leaders across six distinct regions. She also served as Interim Executive Director for Teach for America in Philadelphia. 

The Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem was the first all-girls public school to open in the United States in 30 years, paving the way for a nationwide network of all-girls public schools, the  Young Women’s Leadership Network. TYWLS has grown to six all-girls Title- 1 public schools in New York City, serving nearly 2,600 students. Student Leadership Network’s STEM programming is a vital pillar of a comprehensive pedagogical model, the Whole GIrl Education framework, which builds students’ skills in self-advocacy, growth mindset, and self-regard. The Whole Girl Education framework unites rigorous STEM coursework and after-school and summer programming with culturally relevant teaching practices steeped in gender consciousness. This encourages our students to develop foundational competencies that enable them to successfully enroll in college and face the challenges of bias as they pursue STEM degrees. At Student Leadership Network, we believe that real-world, experiential learning in STEM must be situated within a holistic pedagogical model that caters to the unique experiences of girls and gender-expansive youth from underrepresented communities. 

Our impact goals for one year from now are to increase student confidence & sense of belonging in STEM, improve academic achievement, achieve nearly 100% of TYWLS students receiving college acceptance, and ensure that all students receive an average financial aid package of $15,000. 

In addition to fostering essential competencies among our students that bolster their success in college, our five-year goal is to close the gap between men and women pursuing STEM degrees in college. Currently, 18% of our TYWLS students earn STEM degrees compared to 12% of women nationally, while 25% of men earn STEM degrees. We aim to close that gap and ensure more girls of color earn STEM degrees. 

The overarching goal of Student Leadership is to significantly increase the number of students, especially girls, from underserved communities who gain acceptance to and enroll in college with an optimal financial aid package. This makes college more affordable and, therefore, achievable. By reaching this goal, we increase students’ chances for economic and life success and help fulfill SL Network’s mission. We measure progress toward these goals by the extent to which we achieve key milestones based on historical averages.

SL Network tracks student outcomes in Salesforce, a database that collects individual student data to track progress in meeting critical college-related milestones (e.g., college trips, SAT test-taking, application submission, FAFSA completion, etc.). We monitor students’ progress against milestones using SAT completion rates, the number of college applications submitted, and college acceptance award letters. Our Year-End Report compiles college-going outcomes for graduating seniors. SL Network’s Post-Secondary Tracking System, built in Salesforce, interfaces with the National Student Clearinghouse to track and report twice yearly on alumni’s post-secondary status, including college enrollment, persistence, and degree attainment. Our Research and Evaluation Team oversees the collection and analysis of student outcomes and manages SL Network’s Salesforce system and supporting tools. SL Network’s program staff analyzes outcomes and trends to inform program development and maximize student outcomes. 

The Whole Girl Education framework unites rigorous STEM coursework and after-school and summer programming with culturally relevant teaching practices steeped in gender consciousness. This encourages our students to develop foundational competencies that enable them to successfully enroll in college and face the challenges of bias as they pursue STEM degrees. At Student Leadership Network, real-world, experiential learning in STEM must be situated within a holistic pedagogical model that caters to the unique experiences of girls and gender-expansive youth from underrepresented communities. 

Our programming supports young women from underserved communities, particularly those of color, in overcoming barriers to success perpetuated by generations of racism and oppression. Even though college is a critical driver of economic mobility in the United States, students from underrepresented communities and students of color are frequently excluded from higher education, especially in STEM fields, and do not earn a college degree. At TYWLS, 90% of students come from diverse backgrounds. SL Network provides our students with challenging college preparation and in- and out-of-classroom STEM experiences to enrich their educational journey and pique their interest in STEM fields. Our approach is individualized, affirms all students' identities, embraces diversity, and is executed and assessed through an equity lens to ensure that our efforts benefit all students, regardless of their demographic characteristics.

7 full-time employees.

27 years

Student Leadership Network’s DEI Task Force ensures our programs, policies, and practices are culturally relevant, inclusive, and responsive for students and foster a diverse, equitable, and inclusive organization where staff can thrive. We strive to reflect the students and communities we serve. Self-reported student data shows that 90% of our students identify as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color), and 81% of staff identify as BIPOC. We also implemented several initiatives to support equitable hiring and retention practices, including:

• Launching a new-hire virtual onboarding process via our Human Resources system;

• Undertaking a compensation equity study; and

• Reimagining our annual performance appraisal process to make it an affirming experience. 

The Task Force also champions initiatives that foster inclusivity and amplify staff talent, including a Courageous Conversations series and DEI book club. These staff-led events advance our progress by leaning into our internal experts concerning subject matters that align with our students and mission. The task force will assess professional development strategies and identify ways to build on successful initiatives, such as our Juneteenth family picnic and a staff wellness afternoon.

SL Network’s Director of Talent and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion oversees and forwards DEI within the organization. While we are incredibly proud of the diversity of our staff and have always been committed to ensuring our team reflects the students we serve, we want to ensure that we optimize this diversity and are focusing our near-term efforts on increasing measures of equity and inclusion. To support improvement in these areas, we have adopted a new software system that allows us to track and analyze staff self-reported demographic information. Analysis of our staff data and practices will support our assessment of our processes to ensure that all aspects of our talent cycle are equitable. Further, we are working on several initiatives to support increased feelings of inclusion, including affinity groups, lunch and learns, and fostering an organizational culture where staff feels comfortable elevating exclusionary practices to address them.

As we look at our programming through the lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), we are beginning to conceptualize how to leverage Salesforce and additional data visualization platforms (e.g., Google Data Studio and Tableau) to build dashboards to view student-level data by gender, race, ethnicity, and other demographic characteristics to assess how students are faring across groups and inform our program improvement efforts. We are doing this to identify significant disparities in our outcomes by subgroup and ensure our practices are equitable and inclusive. Embedding filters for the aforementioned student characteristics in our standard reports will allow us to aggregate student-level data and identify potential disparities by subgroup in real-time. We have taken initial steps by creating a prototype College Outcomes Dashboard for our school partners, fully-filterable by available student demographics. We are also exploring approaches to visualization from groups with more mature data products, such as GuidEd Insight. This ongoing work will support us to be more reflective about our practices and quickly course correct when necessary.

Our business model is based on a mix of private fundraising and generating earned revenue. We receive sustained and long-term funding from many pre-eminent funders, including the Robin Hood Foundation, the Charles Hayden Foundation, the Clark Foundation, the Tiger Foundation, Estee Lauder Companies, Bloomberg Philanthropies, etc. We have also focused on growing our earned revenue. Partner schools contribute financially toward programming to offset costs and incentivize schools to work with us as partners. Our expansion plan focuses on increasing earned income over the next several years and expanding nationally to new school districts outside NYC. Our earned revenue has grown to 28% of total revenues in FY23, up from 23% in FY22. We forecast it to increase to 32% of total revenues or $4.5 million in FY24. 

SL Network has a solid plan to ensure financial sustainability to fund our programs in the future, including:

1. A diversified funding portfolio. We receive funds from many different sources, including Foundations/Corporate (34%), Earned Revenue (28%), Board/Individual Gifts (21%), and Special Events (14%). Government funding represents 2%, primarily from the NYC City Council.

2. We receive sustained and long-term funding from many pre-eminent funders, including the Robin Hood Foundation, the Charles Hayden Foundation, the Clark Foundation, the Tiger Foundation, Estee Lauder Companies, and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

3. We have focused on growing our earned revenue. Partner schools contribute financially toward programming to offset costs and incentivize schools to work with us. Our expansion plan focuses on increasing earned income over the next several years and expanding nationally to new school districts outside NYC.

4. We have launched the Equity in Education pledge (EEP) to fund our national growth and impact. Monies raised are designed to achieve the following goals: a) increase College Access by extending our best practices to build district-and school-based capacity in additional regions across the country; b) enhance College Success by supporting first-year college students around critical milestones that impact who persists in college; and c) increase Women of Color in Leadership by expanding the number of TYWLS and YWLN Affiliates girls’ schools to increase the number of alumnae across the country.

5. In addition, we will have started a $5 million endowment at the end of our current fiscal year (FY23).

Over the last few years, the organization has achieved several initiatives to improve its financial sustainability: 

1. Our earned revenue has grown to 28% of total revenues in FY23, up from 23% in FY22. We forecast it to increase to 32% of total revenues or $4.5 million in FY24. Most of this growth has come with our expansion to Buffalo, NY. While we originally started working with them for College Access Capacity Building, we have staffed four high schools with a Director of College Counseling and programming. The district has funded the entire portion of the full-service sites ($1.5 million) in FY24.

2. We generate additional earned revenue by offering College Access and Girls’ Education consulting services to other high schools. 

3. Equity in Education Pledge (EEP): To date, we raised $11 million towards our EEP pledge with several multi-year commitments. Since the launch of EEP in FY22, we have already achieved the following: a) launched a capacity-building pilot program with the Buffalo school district in 4 high schools this year; b) worked with eight College Access clients in NYC and three affiliates; c) started Bridge through College, placing “Near Peer” counselors to work with first-year college students at two campuses in FY22 and expanded to six campuses in FY23; d) opened our sixth TYWLS school in Staten Island with 60 sixth graders; and e) opened a Las Vegas affiliate school and worked with the Jersey City district to open its school.

4. Our new $5 million endowment will generate additional investment and interest income to fund our operations. An endowment will signal to donors our desire to build an organization with long-term sustainability. In FY23, we already tripled our interest income by investing excess cash in a money market fund.