Welcome to T.E.A. with College Futures, a monthly feature dedicated to Talking Equity in Action with grantees, partners, and College Futures Foundation staff. Each month, we’ll highlight efforts addressing inequities in and around higher education and related to socio-economic mobility, and seek learnings and inspirations directly from changemakers.

Braven

Braven empowers underrepresented young people—first-generation students, students from low-income backgrounds, and students of color—by equipping them with the skills, networks, and confidence needed to secure a strong first job. Through partnerships with higher education institutions and employers, Braven provides a two-part program that combines a credit-bearing course with continued support until graduation. In this edition of T.E.A. with College Futures, Executive Director Diana Phuong reflects on Braven’s founding, shares insights on the organization’s success, and discusses plans for future growth.

Q: Let’s get to know Braven. Can you tell us more about what inspired the start of the organization?

A: Braven’s origin story starts with our incredible leader, Aimée Eubanks Davis. She spent many, many years growing up in Chicago and had a terrible experience where one of her family members passed away early on in her life. The passing actually gave her family, at that time, the capital to be able to make moves out of her current community. Within a short period of time, Aimée felt economic mobility and change, and noticed that students in her previous neighborhood, as well as family members, were not afforded the opportunities that she had.

Fast forward, Aimée goes to college, joins Teach for America, and starts to teach in New Orleans. She was able to get some of her students to go to incredible schools–Vanderbilt, Xavier University– but they weren’t landing jobs. Some had even applied to Teach for America, where she was heading up talent at the time, but they were not getting accepted into the program. 

After looking into what was going on, Aimée learned that these students were really struggling with interviews and when she started to have conversations with higher education leaders, she heard similar stories. At San José State University (San José State), they were seeing that many of their female students in the STEM field were not landing jobs at the same rate as their male counterparts. This realization made her really reflect and think about where students acquire these skills.

Eventually Aimée partnered with San José State to build out and run a credit-bearing course that helps students gain skills for navigating the workforce. It starts with a class, but we continue supporting students for two, three, four years afterwards, ensuring that they get a strong first job. A strong first job means that it has a bachelor’s degree tied to it, that there’s salary and benefits, and there’s pathways to promotion. We don’t want students to just work at a company– we really want them to become owners, partners, board members, senior managers and directors who are making decisions and creating an impact. 

We’re really trying to build the next generation of leaders and decision-makers here.

Q: Where are you all now? How many learners are you currently serving?

A: We are in our 11th year of existence – which is really, really exciting to say. In just 10 years at San José State, we’ve served over 2,000 students and we just launched at San Francisco State University (San Francisco State) where we’ll be serving over 4,400 students over the next five years.

Scaling our work has been a powerful opportunity for growth and impact. By expanding to new regions and school sites across the country, we’ve leveraged best practices to strengthen our approach. To date, we’ve served over 12,000 fellows nationally, helping them advance confidently in their career journeys.

Q: Recently, Aimée shared that “Braven is shattering open the social capital network for learners.” Talk us through this statement and why it’s so important. What in your programming contributes to the equitable success of learners who are underserved?  

A: As first generation students, we often hear that going to college will be that beacon of hope for economic mobility. In reality, we know that our affluent counterparts aren’t thinking about going to school for a particular major–it’s about the alumni network. We’ve seen many of our students graduate with degrees, accolades, and amazing merit, but it’s still not about what you know–it’s actually who knows you, who knows your work, who knows the quality of person you are, and who’s going to help you actually make that jump from where you are to where you want to go.

Our model works because at any single point of time, there are five different adults around our students. We have a semester-long course where volunteer professionals from corporate companies and nonprofits connect with a small cohort of students. These professionals actually volunteer and stay with our students for an entire 15 weeks, but oftentimes lifelong relationships develop. Our students finally get to ask all the questions they can’t ask their parents, they can’t ask their uncles or they can’t even ask their cousins–it’s the start of a whole network of professionals they can rely on.

Q: How do you build and sustain partnerships with employers?

A: At Braven, we’re a team of educators. We know how to lesson plan; we know what high quality instruction is; and we know what high quality engagement is, not just for students, but also for our volunteers. We provide volunteers with preparation materials and professional coaching– we want to make sure they are bringing their authentic leadership style while also adhering to our curriculum.

When our volunteers come in, they’re engaging with our students upwards of 60 to 80 hours per semester. And it’s not transactional. These volunteers really learn about a student’s life, their family, their desires and their vulnerabilities. As the relationships develop, volunteers become hooked and invested. 

Employers value these partnerships because they provide access to a rich pool of diverse talent. Many companies have ambitious talent goals, and through our partnerships, they’re now able to connect with exceptional candidates from schools they might not have engaged with, opening new doors for both students and employers. Adobe is a great example. They’re two blocks away from San José State and they had not hired San José State graduates until they started engaging with our students. We’re bringing companies into the fold and they trust us to bring diverse candidates to them who are high quality and incredible.

Q: How do students find Braven?

A: We’re out there! We’re on the ground, tabling, meeting with student organizations, and making sure that we are connecting with students during welcome week.

We really do this work in partnership with institutions, college departments and K-12 organizations who are sending students to our higher education partners. We collaborate closely so that students are introduced to us early and view us as a reliable source of support. Through those connections, we help students feel empowered from the very beginning of their journey.

Q: What’s next for Braven in California?

A: I think there are a lot of opportunities at schools in both Northern and Southern California. Now that we have partnerships with San José State and San Francisco State, we’re hoping that Cal State East Bay comes along and joins the fold as well. We think this is a model that can be replicated in Southern California as well.

We see a tremendous opportunity for the state to unlock public funding for programs like Braven, given the proven effectiveness of our model. The state’s interest in scaling successful initiatives aligns perfectly with our readiness to expand, building on the success we’ve seen at San José State and nationally. Braven has become a leader in providing comprehensive college-to-career support and in recruiting exceptional mentors. With over a decade of strong results and experience managing programs across multiple sites, we’re well-positioned to extend our impact across the entire CSU system, reaching all 23 campuses and empowering even more students to thrive.